The Elephant Gambit
by VR Trakowski
Summary: The persistence of memory.
1. Chapter 1

Most of the characters and situations in this story belong to Christopher Nolan, Legendary Pictures, Syncopy, and other entities, and I do not have permission to borrow them. No infringement is intended in any way, and this story is not for profit. All others belong to me, and if you want to borrow them, you have to ask me first. Any errors are mine, all mine, no you can't have any.

The opinions expressed by characters in this story may or may not be those of the author.

Okay, so I have a thing for this kind of plotline...right back to the very beginning. What can I say? Though two of 'em were canon... Anyway, this is last year's NaNoWriMo, pared down and polished up. Many are my thanks and fervent to Cincoflex for encouragement, suggestions and editing. *grin*

**xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx**

In the end, it had been hideously simple. Ariadne didn't know whether she should berate herself for being so gullible, or acknowledge that the only alternative was paranoia.

Arthur would vote for paranoia, she thought grimly, but that was Arthur.

It was hard to think through the headache and the chill. And the fear, and the fury. Ariadne twisted her wrists for the _nth_ time, but all it won her was a little more blood to her cold fingers. She lay on her side in a small blank room, on a hard metal floor, and that was all she could say about her present predicament.

She'd been having _coffee,_ for pity's sake. In an ordinary Cleveland coffee shop, because that was where their last job had been and she'd wanted to linger for a day and get over the jet lag. So, a latte, and the latest issue of _Build_, and maybe a muffin later. Just a day _off._

_Arthur's going to go insane._ It made her sick to think it, but there was patently nothing Ariadne could do about it. He took his responsibilities very seriously, and even if they weren't on a job just now, having one of his people _vanish_ was going to drive him straight up the proverbial wall.

The thing was, she didn't know quite how they - whoever they were - had managed it. All she remembered was getting dizzy where she sat in the busy shop. _Probably Rohypnol or something like it._ Which was an even scarier thought, except as far as she could tell she hadn't been touched aside from the rope holding her hands behind her back and her ankles together. The harsh light from the one naked bulb strung overhead showed her her own clothes, wrinkled but untwisted.

There was something linking the bindings, preventing her from sitting up. Ariadne could flop from side to side like a gaffed fish, but that was all; and between the headache and her burgeoning thirst, she wasn't inclined to move much. Shouting had produced absolutely no effect; she couldn't hear anything at all outside the little room. She desperately wanted to check her totem, but there was no way to reach her pockets - and in all her rolling back and forth she had yet to feel it dig into her leg. Probably, like the phone that had been on her belt, it was gone.

_Clearly they want you for __**something**_, she told herself. _Whoever "they" may be._ But it was hard to keep away visions of simply being abandoned in this small prison, to die of thirst - or cold, if it got chillier. And, she had to admit, if being wanted by whoever had drugged and kidnapped her was the _bright_ spot in a situation, things were pretty dire.

_I wish I knew what time it is._ It was almost as frustrating as the stubborn bindings, not knowing how much time had passed -

The clanking noise from behind her made Ariadne freeze, then flip over with clumsy haste to face whatever was making the sound. As she watched, the far wall split in half, one side swinging open to reveal a skinny figure with a gun in its hand. Ariadne held very still.

The gust of fresh air was enlivening, even if it smelled more like concrete than the outdoors. Ariadne knew she should look beyond the - man, yes, it was a male, to see what she could outside the room, but her attention was riveted on the gun, a heavy, ugly revolver. It wasn't until the man shoved it into his waistband that she could focus properly on him.

He was - weedy, was all she could think; tall, but bony and stooped, and not especially clean. He wore gloves, and a ski mask pulled over his head, and the latter made her feel a little better. _If he doesn't want me to see his face, maybe he plans to let me go - _

He stepped closer. Ariadne shrank back, hating herself for the cowardice but unable to help it. The man hesitated, then moved forward again and circled around her. "Hold still," he said in a slightly hoarse voice.

She obeyed, mostly because struggling wouldn't get her anywhere. He fumbled at her wrists, and then the bindings eased and fell away.

Her captor backed up. Ariadne bit back a whimper as strained muscles made themselves felt, but she was able to push herself into a sitting position in just two tries. She glared up at the man. "What do you want?"

He looked back with colorless eyes, ignoring the question. "I don't want to hurt you. Behave yourself, and you'll be fine." The way his hand caressed the revolver's butt made a chill run up Ariadne's spine. "I'll be back in a little while."

He backed towards the door, clearly taking no chance that she might spring up and attack him. Ariadne struggled to focus. "Can - can I have some water?" she managed, hating how her voice wavered.

The man didn't reply, merely disappearing through the door; the clank as it closed made the whole room echo in a ridiculously theatrical manner. Ariadne slumped back, furious and sick. _Who the hell __**is**__ that? What does he want with me? _She supposed she should be grateful that he had undone her bonds, but all she felt was resentment mixed with simmering fear.

Still, they _were_ undone. Despite the stiffness of her fingers, she was able to unknot the loop holding her ankles together, and it was a relief to sit with her back braced against the wall and rub her chafed wrists. Ariadne looked around her prison. It was a long, relatively narrow room, with one light fixture overhead; the wires disappeared through a hole drilled in the ceiling. _A metal room? Weird._

And then it dawned on her, and she wanted to kick herself for not figuring it out sooner. "Not a room, idiot," she muttered. "It's a shipping container." It was almost the perfect prison - the only avenue of egress was the door, which couldn't be opened from the inside.

Ariadne reached for her pocket, but her earlier fears were correct; everything she'd had with her was gone, including her keys and the scarf she'd been wearing. _Well. Odds are this is reality anyway._ She'd tried to change things earlier, the way she might in a dream, but nothing had happened.

She sighed, and pushed stiffly to her feet. Walking would warm her up and loosen her cramped muscles, and hopefully help with the drug hangover.

As she paced, Ariadne let herself think about Arthur. Did he know she was gone yet? She hadn't been due to fly out until - She realized that she had no idea what _day_ it was either, and growled.

_I'm okay._ Ariadne didn't believe in telepathy, but she sent the thought out anyway. _I'm okay, Arthur_. And tried not to imagine him frantic. Tried instead to imagine his arms around her, his reassuring presence by her side, because as much as Ariadne didn't consider herself to be a stereotypical helpless female, she was _feeling_ pretty helpless. And her lover was very, very good at protecting.

The door clanked again, and Ariadne whirled, but the figure just outside didn't enter. Instead, he tossed something in and shut the door before she could react.

The bottle of water bounced dully and rolled across the floor, and Ariadne took five quick steps to scoop it up. It was new, sealed; she opened it with clumsy fingers and drank hastily, gulping. It was warm, but she didn't care.

After the first few swallows Ariadne made herself stop. _Don't make yourself sick._ She glanced around uneasily. _Plus there's no toilet in here._ Which would be a problem before too long, she judged.

She took one more mouthful, swishing it around to get rid of the last stickiness, then swallowed and recapped the bottle before sitting down again, back against the wall and water to hand. "You're okay," she muttered. "At least for now."

And tried to believe it.

**xxxx**

Dom returned the straight-edge to its place without looking, absorbed in the diagram gradually taking form beneath his somewhat smudged fingers. It was good, so good, to get back to design after all this time, even if it was only for a real-world building, and not a very exciting one at that. He had laid his ghosts to rest, and if Mal was still the first thought on his mind when he woke and the image behind his eyes when he closed them at night, she was at peace now. His muse was no longer a Fury…just the woman he had loved and lost.

He led a quiet life now, and hung onto it with both hands, conscious every moment of the value of peace.

Which was, a moment later, shattered by a scream. Dom sighed and set down his stylus, rubbing his forehead without caring what might transfer from his fingers. He'd gotten better about ignoring the noises, but every so often one - excitement or game or argument - broke through.

Absently, he waited to hear Frances' voice rise above the ongoing screams in admonition or pacification, but nothing came. And, he realized, the shriek held real alarm.

Frowning, Dom spun on his stool and stood up, threading his way through the house to the front door and striding out. "James? What's the problem?"

His son barreled into him, throwing small arms around Dom's legs in a panicked clutch and babbling. Dom bent and scooped him up, looking around for Philippa and Frances and seeing neither.

"Hey, hey, it's okay." He stroked James' tangled curls from his eyes, trying to soothe. "What's the matter? Are you hurt?" There didn't seem to be any blood, at least.

James wailed and buried his face in Dom's shoulder. Dom hugged him, looking around again and starting to be alarmed himself. James' cries should have brought both his sister and his grandmother, and there was no sign of either. "James…James, calm down, buddy. Where's Pippa?"

"Dom?" His mother-in-law's voice came from behind him, and Dom turned to see her emerging from the bathroom down the hall. "What's going on?"

"I don't know - where's Philippa? Is she with you?" His daughter was often impatient with her little brother, but she was very protective too, and was never far away when they were outside.

"No, she stayed outside, I - James, what is it, _mon choux_?" Frances stroked James' head, her elderly face creasing into concern.

"Pippa's _gone!"_ It was half a sob, and the face James raised from Dom's shoulder was red and heartbroken. "The bad guys _took_ her!"

Dom's heart tore in his chest, a lightning pain that brought panic screaming along behind. "_What?_ James, what bad guys?"

The boy rubbed one fist over his eyes, woe in every line. "G'mère went inside and there was a car, and the bad guys chased us, but Pippa was mean and she stopped them, but they _got_ her!"

The story was confusing, but Dom was used to sorting out James' meaning, and he looked over his son's head at Frances, who had gone bone-white. "Are they playing a game?"

"I don't think so." Her voice was faint. "Pippa was playing ponies, and you know how she is when - Dom, they couldn't have - "

He pushed James into her arms and bolted outside, frantically scanning the yard for the little figure in the yellow t-shirt and sneakers. "_Philippa!_ Where are you?"

But she was not there. She wasn't under the trees, or in the backyard, or even down the road, and when gently questioned James didn't change his story. There had been a car, and two men who had chased the children; Philippa had been caught, but had fought so hard that James had gotten away. The men had put her in the car and driven away.

"She told me run," James sniffled. "She was _mad_." He lifted wet eyes to his father.

"You did the right thing," Dom told him around the lump in his throat, cuddling James close. Frances had already called the police.

"Will she come back?" James asked, and Dom squeezed his own eyes shut, feeling the pressure behind them. "Is she gone like Mommy?"

"No." It was a vow he had no idea if he could keep. "No, we'll get her back."

**xxxx**

"What do you mean, she wasn't on the plane?" Arthur frowned, eyes unfocused as he concentrated on the voice at the other end of the connection. "She had a ticket - "

The customer service agent's voice droned on in his ear. Ms. Temenos did have a ticket, yes, but she had not checked in, either in person or electronically. As far as the airline was concerned, she had simply missed her flight -

His temper snapped, and Arthur thumbed the phone off, squeezing much too hard. _Simple, my ass. Nothing about this is simple._ Ariadne was _punctual_, it was one of the things he loved about her. If she'd just missed her flight, she would have called.

But she hadn't. She hadn't stepped off her plane at Orly; she hadn't even gotten on in Cleveland, it appeared. She hadn't checked out of the motel.

If it had been almost anyone else, Arthur would have been cynical. In their business, people vanished all the time, slipping between the cracks to lie low for a while. _But she wouldn't have gone without telling me. Hell, she wouldn't have gone at all._

_Not without me._

It was one of the new truths in his life, Ariadne's firm assurance that they were a couple. He'd been prepared to ease into it, aware of his own flaws as a lover, but she'd simply taken it as a given, and while he'd had to make a few adjustments, her wholehearted acceptance had been an unforeseen delight. To her, they were a pair, and she would no more leave him without a word than he would disappear without telling _her._

_Something is very, very wrong._

He set down the phone with deliberate care and looked out at the vista beyond the window. Moving to London had been a business calculation on both their parts, but money bought a pleasant view, and their spacious flat was the first permanent home Arthur had possessed in years. It was comfortable and beautiful both, but without Ariadne it echoed, and he felt a black dread growing. Was she hurt, lying unconscious and unidentified in one of the hospitals he'd already called? He was her emergency contact - had someone mugged her?

Or worse, had someone taken her for revenge? For leverage? For - and it was the worst thought - some random reason? Had she just caught a passing psychopath's eye?

_Ariadne - _

The phone rang, startling him. Arthur snatched it up, hoping desperately that it was Ariadne herself with some complicated tale of circumstances, he could forgive her any slip-up if she'd only just - "Yeah?"

"Arthur." It was Dom's voice, rough and taut. "Philippa's been kidnapped."

Arthur sat up straight, a fresh chill running through him. "_Damn._ What happened?"

"I don't know - James said two men dragged her into a car and drove off - we haven't heard anything yet. Arthur, I…your connections - can you help?"

Under any other circumstances, he would have been on the next plane, ready to give his old friend any aid his own particular skills could supply, as well as moral support. But not now. "I…Dom, I can't. Ariadne's disappeared, I can't get in touch with her and…"

In that instant, the pattern was clear. He had no proof, and he didn't know _who,_ but he knew. The oath whispered past his lips. "Oh _fuck…_"

Dom's realization was only a beat behind his own. "It's the same people, isn't it?"

Arthur told himself that the scrap of knowledge was better than nothing, but it rang hollow. "I'd stake a lot on it. I'll be on the next flight out."

"Hurry," Dom said, and his voice broke on the word. "Please. Hurry."

Arthur ended the call and began packing rapidly, collecting essentials with the mindless ease of long practice. _It has to be the same people, the coincidence is just too great. Which means one of two things - leverage, or revenge._

_Pray it's leverage._

Because if it was revenge, they most likely would never see either Philippa or Ariadne again.

At least alive...

**xxxx**

Ariadne was still damning her decision to not wear a watch that morning. _That's the last time I rely on my cellphone._ She paced slowly up and down the length of the shipping container, trying to count seconds in her head and sourly aware that she was probably either too fast or too slow. _Not that it makes much difference since I don't know what time I'm starting from._

The container was roughly twenty yards long, and apparently had ventilation holes somewhere, because the air was stuffy but never became unbearable. Ariadne decided they had to be up near the ceiling and out of her reach, because she couldn't find them.

She'd spent what had probably been an hour examining her prison minutely, but there wasn't much to find. The door was firmly shut, and had never been intended to be opened from the inside. The walls and floor were scarred and dented, which told her the container had been used for its intended purpose at some point. And she still could hear nothing from outside, which meant…actually, she didn't know what it meant. Maybe she was in an isolated location, maybe she was indoors, maybe the damned box was just really well insulated. There was just no telling.

She stopped and rubbed her aching temples. It was hard to keep from imagining Arthur in the same situation, and trying to figure out what he'd do; and as much as she admired the man and his wits, she didn't think he could come up with some way to get out - at least not without power tools.

_Dom and Professor M never covered kidnapping._ The thought was half-humorous. They'd both warned her of the dangers of extraction, but only of angry clients or addiction to the machine. _I guess this is a new one._

Ariadne leaned against one chilly wall and frowned thoughtfully. The truth was, she didn't know for sure that her abduction had anything to do with her work. _Could be unrelated; it could even be a mistake._ But the only people in her life who had money enough to make a ransom worth the risk were Arthur and Dom, which led her right back to the business of Dream-theft. _I need more data._

And a toilet. The need was getting urgent. Ariadne sighed and tried to think of something else -

The sound of the door opening was becoming familiar. She pushed away from the wall, fear making her knees weak but anger stiffening her spine. Her captor, still masked, stepped through but halted just inside, tossing something at her. "Here."

Ariadne caught the object automatically despite its awkward flight. It was a pair of handcuffs, shiny silver, and she stared back at him, outraged. "You have got to be kidding."

He gestured with one hand impatiently, then pulled the revolver from his waistband. "If you want to visit the can, put 'em on. In front."

Everything in her rebelled at making herself more helpless. But the pressure in her bladder was stronger, so Ariadne slowly obeyed, fastening the cuffs around each wrist and letting her hands fall to her waist.

The man nodded in satisfaction. "Okay, come on." He waved the revolver towards the door.

The shipping container was in a warehouse, or an industrial garage, Ariadne saw as soon as she passed through - a big space, all harsh lights and concrete, with various bits of obsolete-looking machinery scattered around. Two couches and a table had been set up near the container, forming a living area of sorts; it was messy with papers and trash, Ariadne saw as she passed it, but she didn't have much time to look. Her captor urged her on with another wave of the gun, pointing her past the couches towards a door in the nearest wall. As she neared it Ariadne saw that it had one of the semi-universal symbols for a lavatory - in this case, a male.

As she pushed the door open, the man spoke, his voice sardonic. "Take your time, I'm not in a hurry. The lock's broken, though, so don't even think about trying to hide in there."

Ariadne didn't deign to reply. The bathroom was small and not very clean, she saw with a grimace as she pushed the door shut, but it was better than nothing and she had seen worse. She looked around uneasily, not happy about using the toilet with her kidnapper just on the other side of an unlockable door, but there was nothing in the room that could be used to block the doorway.

_He hasn't even come near you since you woke up,_ she reminded herself. _Whatever he wants, assault doesn't seem to be part of it…yet anyway. _

She took her time making use of the facilities, and washed up thoroughly at the stained sink. There was a streaked mirror hung over it, the sort that was polished metal rather than glass, and it reflected a still-pale, pinched face surrounded by a tangle of dark hair. Ariadne stuck her tongue out at the image and raked her fingers clumsily through the snarls, trying not to catch her hair on the short chain linking the cuffs.

But eventually there was nothing else she could do to delay, and she pulled the door open and peered out.

Her captor was sitting on the nearer couch, bent over a newspaper spread out on the box serving as a low table. Ariadne thought briefly of running, but he was already looking up, and without even knowing where the exit was it seemed stupid.

_Wait and see. _

He escorted her back to the shipping container, halting a few feet inside. "Here."

His left hand held the key to the cuffs. Ariadne approached him cautiously and held up her wrists, trying not to flinch. He fumbled the key into the lock using only one hand, swearing under his breath, and she glanced down at his right hand, which hung motionless in its glove at his side. _Paralysis?_

Eventually he was able to open one cuff, and stepped back. "You finish it."

Ariadne unlocked the other cuff quickly. "Key," the man demanded, and on impulse she tossed it back; he caught it against his chest, and left without another word.

As soon as the door banged shut, Ariadne blew out a breath and sagged to the floor. Nothing about her kidnapper was overtly threatening, besides the gun, but nonetheless she was as tense as wire, nerves jangling. She set the cuffs down beside her and ran the past few minutes back through her memory, searching for detail.

She hadn't been able to see much of the building, but there hadn't been anyone else around, and no visible exits or recognizable machines. Even the smell of the place had been general, old grease and cold metal and dust. There was nothing in the lavatory that would so much as tell her what continent she was on.

But her kidnapper - _ Young,_ Ariadne thought. _Mid-thirties, maybe. _And despite his grubby appearance, he hadn't _smelled _unwashed. And he had an accent that placed him in North America.

It was his right hand that intrigued her. Her earlier memories were still a little drug-fogged, but she couldn't remember him using that hand at all - he'd handled the revolver with his left. _So maybe it is paralyzed, or maybe he's hurt. That could be useful. _

If she ever got the chance to use the information, anyway. Ariadne leaned her head back against the wall and sighed again, realizing bleakly that at the moment her biggest problem with captivity wasn't going to be him, it was going to be _boredom._

She snickered. _I wonder if he'd let me read the newspaper when he's done with it._

Time passed slowly. The door opened twice more, once to provide her a lukewarm TV dinner and a fresh bottle of water, and once to offer her another bathroom run. They repeated the cuff routine for the latter; Ariadne thought about making the cuffs loose enough to slip off, but was glad she hadn't when her captor checked them as she passed.

Afterwards she wished she'd thought to ask for something more - a chair, a toothbrush, a blanket - but it didn't dawn on her until after he'd closed the door. She sat with her back against the wall and played idly with the empty cuffs for lack of anything else, listening to the ratchet of the teeth and feeling the metal warm under her fingers.

The sound was so muffled that she almost missed it, but when it came again Ariadne froze, listening hard. Someone was yelling, angry and muffled; the shouting paused, then resumed, and she realized that he was talking on a phone. It made her shiver.

Eventually the yelling stopped. There was a bang, as if something had been thrown or slammed, and then silence again, thicker than before. It took the tickle of wetness on her chin for Ariadne to realize she was crying.

The fear boiled up, black as ink in water, pushing aside even the anger. She didn't so much as sob, but the tears ran thick and fast, blurring the sight of her prison, and they went on, and on.


	2. Chapter 2

**Most of the characters and situations in this story belong to Christopher Nolan, Legendary Pictures, Syncopy, NBC, and other entities, and I do not have permission to borrow them. No infringement is intended in any way, and this story is not for profit. All others belong to me, and if you want to borrow them, you have to ask me first. Any errors are mine, all mine, no you can't have any. **

**The opinions expressed by characters in this story may or may not be those of the author. **

**Fun with anguish. Oh, I'm mean to my characters. :P As always, ****Cincoflex**** kept me on the straight and narrow...and going! **

**xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx**

He'd been awake for almost twenty-four hours now, and things were starting to get wavery around the edges, but Dom couldn't sleep, and wouldn't. The police detectives kept telling him to get some rest, but he knew that closing his eyes wouldn't help. So he sat on the couch with the FBI agent who'd come along with them, a slender woman named Davis, and waited.

There was nothing else he could do. Not until the kidnappers contacted him, or at least that was what everyone kept saying. But a lifetime of patience honed in ferreting out secrets was eroding rapidly, and every time the phone rang Dom found himself twitching, barely able to restrain a leap for the handset.

Frances was looking after a bewildered James, trying to keep him out of the way of the law enforcement people swarming through the house. Miles was on his way from France, and Arthur - Dom kept returning to his old friend and then wincing away. _Ariadne's been taken too,_ he reminded himself, and on some level he was afraid for her, but the thought that burned in his brain was Philippa. _She's so small. She's only six - please, God, please - don't let her be hurt, don't let her be frightened - _

The detectives in the study were talking quietly, a hushed murmur that was part of the oppressive quietness of the house. Dom almost wished for James' voice uplifted in question or exclamation, just to make things sound more normal.

When he leaned back, he could just see the screen of the laptop they were working with; it was the surveillance video again, the one from the Cleveland coffee shop. The picture wasn't good, but it was enough to make out Ariadne slumping slowly onto the table, and a man about Dom's height gathering her up and carrying her out. Her boyfriend, the barista had said brightly; _oh, she just passes out sometimes, low blood pressure, that's what he said, and he took such good care of her - _

It had been slick enough to turn Dom's stomach. Simple, and cleaner than the brute-force snatch that had taken Philippa. But he'd seen it several times now, and if there was more information to be gained from the video, it would be garnered by the experts.

There was a flurry of activity at the front door, and then Arthur passed the officer stationed on guard, white and strained and hours ahead of when Dom had expected him. Dom pushed to his feet and grasped Arthur's hand, the only welcome his dizzy brain could provide. "How'd you get here so fast?" he managed at last.

Arthur's smile was small and grim. "Private jet. Any news?"

Dom shook his head, and Arthur set down the bag he had slung over one shoulder. He looked like he did after any extraction, casually dressed to blend in, but the usual intensity was tripled.

"No one knows anything, no one's called." Dom scrubbed one hand over his face. "It occurred to me that I shouldn't have asked you - if they try to contact you and you're not there - "

Arthur shook his head. "Oh no. I think these people know exactly where I am. In fact, I'm willing to bet that they were waiting for me to get here before they call." His gaze flicked around the room. "There's more to the theory but - "

"If you're wondering if we know about Mr. Cobb's prior activities, we do," Agent Davis said, rising. She was about Dom's age, with penetrating dark eyes and a steely calm. Arthur stiffened, but she shook her head. "Your own, ah, profession, is of no interest to the FBI at present except as it impinges on this situation."

Dom gestured between Arthur and the woman. "Sorry. Arthur, this Special Agent Monica Harris."

Arthur nodded curtly. Harris' expression softened, her lips curving up in a slight smile. "All we want is to get Ms. Temenos and Philippa back safely, Mr. Chase. We're on the same team here."

"As you say." Arthur's tone was flat, and Dom recognized it as his friend reserving judgment. He didn't care. He would take any and all help he could get.

"The guest room's yours," Dom told Arthur, who nodded and hefted his bag to head down the hallway. Dom returned to his place on the couch, spinning his totem again and again, each time hoping it would tell him something different.

Either Agent Davis knew what the top was, or she was putting it down to a nervous tic, because she didn't comment when she sat down next to him. "I'll understand if your friend wants to discuss his theories in private, but the more you tell us, the faster we'll find Philippa," she said quietly.

Dom breathed out, a thin layer of amusement atop his turmoil. "I think I can convince him to work with you," he replied. "Arthur's just a little touchy about law enforcement."

"That's not the word I'd use," Arthur said behind them, and Dom looked back to see him with his hands in his pockets, the same black humor in his face. "But I can play nice when necessary, Special Agent."

Harris, apparently not at all taken aback, inclined her head. "Thank you, Mr. Chase. Now, you have a theory?"

Arthur shrugged and came around to take the chair opposite them, pulling his notebook from his shirt pocket and uncapping a pen. To Harris, he probably looked remarkably cool for someone whose lover had been abducted, but Dom could see the tension in his long frame, the whiteness in his fingers as he gripped the pen's barrel. Arthur was maintaining control, but not without considerable effort.

"Leverage," he said crisply. "Dom no longer performs extractions, but he was _the_ best. If someone wants his talent back in the game, this is one way to achieve it."

"And Ms. Temenos?" Harris asked. "You're still _in_ the game, Mr. Chase. Why should they pressure you?"

"We were a team," Dom answered, shooting Arthur a sad smile. "If they want the best, they'll need _both_ of us."

Arthur's lifted brow was acknowledgment enough. "I wonder who they think the third member should be, though."

"Third?" Harris looked from Arthur to Dom and back again. "Are they pressuring someone else?"

Arthur shook his head. "An extraction team usually has three or four members," he said, lecturing gently. "An extractor, a point man to handle the details - " He pointed his pen back at himself. " - an architect to design the Dream, and maybe one or two more people to work the mark. The jobs can overlap, but - "

The phone rang.

For an instant they all froze, and then Dom jerked to his feet. Harris rose at the same time, hand on his arm. "Remember what we talked about," she said, her voice firm. "Stay calm, ask for proof, and keep them talking as long as possible."

Dom barely heard her. The phone was still ringing, and the end of every peal made his heart spasm, because what if the caller gave up before he answered? _Pippa - _

He could feel everyone looking as he strode to the phone now nested in a tangle of cables. The technician sitting next to it pressed a button and nodded up at him, and Dom cleared his throat, hearing the hiss of the speaker in the sudden hush. "Hello?"

The voice that answered was mechanically distorted, almost computer-like. _"Hello, Cobb." _

He braced a hand on the edge of the table and tried to order his whirling thoughts. "Who - who is this?"

"_Not yet,"_ the voice said. _"But soon. Where's Arthur? I know he's there."_

Arthur cleared his throat, pitching his voice to carry across the table. "I'm here."

The laugh was scarcely recognizable as such. _"Good, Cobb's bitch. I knew you'd run right to him." _

Arthur's lips went white, but he didn't so much as take his gaze from the phone. Dom swallowed. "Is Philippa all right? And Ariadne?"

"_They're fine,_" the voice said, sounding obscenely cheerful. _"I'd rather have had the boy too, but a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush, as they say. As long as you do what you're told, they'll stay fine."_

Next to Arthur, Agent Harris gestured, and Dom tried to remember. "I - I need proof of that."

"_Too bad." _The declaration was flat. _"Here's what's going to happen. You and your bitch are going to Tokyo. You'll get a room in the Tobu Narita Holiday Inn. Just the two of you - no cops, no fucking FBI, no nothing. You'll get more instructions there." _

The line disconnected with an audible click, and Dom flinched. The technician next to him, a slender man with curly brown hair, shook his head. "Voice over IP - it wasn't long enough."

Harris blew out her breath, expression grim. "Well, we'll work with what we've got. Cody, get on the horn with Headquarters, we're going to have to - "

"No." Arthur shook his head at the people starting to move to her order. "He said no one else."

Harris gave him a patient look. "Mr. Chase, they always say that. I assure you, discretion - "

The look he returned was considerably less patient. "Special Agent, _I _assure _you_ that he means it. Extraction work is inherently illegal; anyone who makes a living at it develops a sixth sense where law enforcement is concerned."

Harris' lips tightened. "We're not amateurs. I'm sorry, Mr. Cobb - " She turned to face him. "But you don't really have a choice."

Arthur inhaled, but Dom caught his gaze and shook his head. Arthur closed his mouth, silenced but not quelled, and Dom returned his attention to Harris. "As you said, we're all on the same team." He rubbed his eyes, not having to feign weariness. "While you sort things out, I'm going to go update Mme. Laine. She's worried."

The agent's expression softened. "Good idea. And get some rest if you can - I know it's not easy."

Dom nodded shortly and left the busy room behind, heading down the long hallway towards his bedroom. About thirty seconds later, Arthur followed him in.

"Do you still keep the DeSoto out back?" he asked, already typing a message into his cellphone.

"It's gassed up." Dom tossed him the keys he'd taken from the top of his dresser. "I'll meet you at the corner."

"Right." Arthur didn't even glance up. "I don't have any smokes on me, so tell Frances I'll buy her a new pack."

"I'll do that." Dom watched Arthur leave again, and began gathering the items he'd need.

A few minutes later he stood in the doorway of James' room, pushing aside the roil of renewed terror and fury the phone call had generated. _You don't have time for that now. _

James was in Frances' lap in the old rocker, drowsing against her as she rocked and hummed. Dom felt a stab of fresh pain at the sight of the deepened lines on her face, the rigid control. Bad enough that she'd lost her daughter already; to lose her granddaughter too…

He cleared his throat softly and she looked up. "There's news?" she said in a low voice.

Dom crossed the room to look down at his son. "The kidnapper called," he said, equally quietly. "We're to go to Tokyo."

She didn't even blink, legacy of half a lifetime of dealing with the peculiarities of Dream-business. "And?"

He shrugged, bleakly amused that she knew him so well. "And we're not waiting for the FBI to get its collective ass in gear."

Frances tapped his cheek lightly for the vulgarity, though Dom didn't think James was awake enough to notice. "Tell Arthur he's to look after you."

"He always does." Dom crouched down next to the chair and reached out to brush James' curls back from his sleep-flushed face. "Hey, buddy, can you wake up for a minute?"

His son stirred, peering muzzily at him, and Dom smiled, holding out his arms. James moved into them, resting his head on Dom's shoulder, and Dom held him close.

"Is Pippa back?" the little voice asked, and Dom had to squeeze his eyes shut and swallow hard.

"No, she's not. Mr. A and I are going to go get her, and bring her home."

James pushed back enough to meet Dom's gaze. "Can I come?"

"Sorry, buddy, I need you to stay here and look after Grandmère for me. Can you do that?"

James considered the question, then nodded solemnly. Dom nodded back. "Good. We'll be back soon." And he prayed it wasn't a lie.

James nodded again, and yawned. Dom kissed the soft round cheek gently, then lowered his son onto Frances' lap once more. She nodded too, a silent farewell.

Dom returned to his bedroom, closing the door behind him but not locking it; he didn't want to have to replace it when he got back. By now, he knew, Arthur had filched a pack of Frances' cigarettes and gone out the back door, ostensibly for a smoke and a walk to settle his nerves. Dom estimated that they might have up to half an hour before Agent Harris started to suspect anything.

His bedroom window was easy to open. Dom swung himself up and over the sill, dropping down to the ground on the other side without a sound. There was a cop stationed at the front door to keep away reporters and the curious, but the land behind the house was scrub woodland and it all belonged to Dom.

He slipped into the trees as silently as he'd left the house, heading for the spot where the road curved around and where Arthur would be waiting with the antique car. It would get them to the airport, and after that - well, Dom trusted Arthur's skills.

_Hell, we may be wheels-up before Harris figures it out._

_Pippa, Ariadne, we're coming. _

**xxxxx**

Ariadne woke cramped, chilly, thirsty, and annoyed. The floor of her prison was no comfortable place to sleep, especially without so much as a blanket, and her arm was numb from being used as a pillow.

_And I'm dying for a shower and a toothbrush and geeze, some clean clothes would be nice. _

_And why don't you wish for escape, revenge, and the Moon while you're at it? _

She pushed stiffly up into a sitting position. Without a watch, there was no way to know how long she'd slept, but she didn't think it had been more than a few hours - she still felt logy and tired. In fact, she wasn't sure why she'd woken at all.

A muffled bang came from outside the shipping container, and Ariadne blinked, wondering if that was what had roused her. She couldn't identify the sound, but it sounded hollow -

The more familiar noise of the door opening had her gathering her wits and standing up. But the figure that appeared in the gap was far too short to be her captor, and stumbled inside as if pushed.

The door slammed shut again, and Ariadne gaped at the new prisoner, astonished and yet beset by a weird sense of familiarity. "Um," she began.

The child stared at her with huge eyes, small fists clenched, and Ariadne had to lean against the wall as the memory came clear. She had never seen the little girl's face, but there was no forgetting her, even if she was older now and hardly carefree. "You're Philippa."

The girl blinked, mouth squinching up in doubt or distress. "Who're you?"

_Oh hell. I don't know how to talk to kids._ It was true; Ariadne had no younger siblings and had never been the babysitting type. "I know your dad. And your grandfather, Miles." After a moment she focused more on the actual question. "Oh, my name's Ariadne."

Philippa eyed her dubiously. Ariadne reevaluated her situation rapidly. If Dom's kid had been kidnapped too, that meant that whatever was going on _had_ to be related to extraction. _But why an architect and a __**kid**__? There's a connection, but this doesn't make sense - _

"Are you a bad guy too?" Philippa asked at last, and Ariadne choked on a laugh.

"No! No, I'm - I've been kidnapped too. Um…want to come sit down?" She resumed her spot on the floor and patted the metal beside her, struggling to figure out how to talk to the girl. "Wait - is your brother here too?"

Philippa's expression was all fierce satisfaction. "No, I _bit_ them, and he got away."

Ariadne raised her brows. "Good job," she said, not having to feign admiration. Philippa gave her one more considering look and then came slowly over to sit down.

She was wearing a yellow shirt with a horse on it, slightly grubby jeans, sneakers, and a necklace of bright plastic beads. Ariadne hoped that the thugs hadn't drugged her; surely she was small enough to control?

At a loss for anything else, Ariadne picked up the water bottle, still mostly full. "Are you thirsty?"

"Yeah." Philippa took it when Ariadne held it out, and opened it before Ariadne could offer to take the cap off. Ariadne watched as the girl drank almost all the water, wondering helplessly what to do. Philippa was her responsibility now, for Dom's sake if nothing else, but - _I don't really know anything about them, what she can do or even how to keep her occupied - _

But she could protect the girl, or at least try, and as feeble as that was it made Ariadne feel better. Something to _do_, even if it was abstract at the moment, was better than nothing. It made her feel a little less helpless.

When Philippa finished and put the cap carefully back on, Ariadne looked her over again. "You're not hurt, are you?"

The girl shook her head. "No. They said they would hurt me if I wasn't quiet, so I didn't even cry." She looked very proud of herself. "But I'm _hungry._"

Ariadne had to chuckle. "Me too, but we'll have to wait for room service to come around." She took the bottle back and set it down.

Philippa was studying her closely. "You know my daddy?" she said at last, and Ariadne nodded.

"We worked together. And, um, your grandfather is my teacher."

Philippa absorbed this. "Did you know my mommy?"

Ariadne hid a flinch, remembering the elemental creature trapped in Dom's mind. "No, I never met her."

"She's dead," Philippa said matter-of-factly, picking at the frayed cuff of her jeans. "James thinks she's coming back, but he's just a baby."

Ariadne had no idea what to say to that, but Philippa didn't seem to want an answer. "Is the bad guy going to kill us?"

The eyes she lifted to Ariadne's were asking but not frightened, and Ariadne stared back down, wanting to lie to her but not quite able to do it. "Not if I can help it."

Philippa nodded, then looked around their prison. "It's really boring in here."

Ariadne had to laugh. "Yeah, it is. If I had my notebook I could draw for you, but - "

"You can tell me a story." Philippa's face lit. "I like fairy stories best."

"Um." Once again Ariadne felt helpless. "I'm not sure I remember any stories." At the little girl's disappointment, she struggled to think of something. "Okay…well…how about 'Little Red Riding Hood'? I think I remember that one."

Philippa's expression told her that it wasn't the best choice, but her response was polite. "Okay."

"Right, um. Once upon a time…"

Ariadne quickly discovered two things: that she _didn't _remember the story, at least well enough to tell it, and that Philippa did. In fact, Philippa took over before Little Red got as far as Grandma's house, and seemed to get a kick out of telling it to Ariadne instead of the other way around. After that it was Cinderella, though a few details seemed a bit off to Ariadne, and Snow White, though Sleeping Beauty was dismissed as "boring". Ariadne sat and listened, making encouraging noises and pretending not to notice when the narrative got a little off track, because it _was_ something to do, and it kept the child occupied. Which meant that she herself wouldn't have to come up with anything else just then.

Although her recurring motif of trying to imagine what Arthur would do in the same situation ran aground on the notion of him interacting with Philippa. Ariadne knew he'd met the children, that he and Dom had been friends since before the little girl had been born, but she simply couldn't picture her reserved and _adult_ lover sitting on a dirty floor and trying to entertain a child.

_He's probably perfect at it and I just can't conjure it up,_ she thought glumly, nodding as Philippa named all the dwarves that cared for Snow White, and not pointing out the fact that she had only listed six names.

Philippa was yawning by the time she finished the story. Ariadne bit her lip, then unbuttoned the sweater she was wearing over her shirt. _It's chilly!_ wailed one part of her mind, but she told it to shut up and pulled the garment off.

"How about a nap?" she said cautiously, leaning over to wrap the sweater around Philippa's shoulders.

The girl blinked sleepily at her, then nodded, stuck her thumb in her mouth, and astounded Ariadne by scooting over to lean against her.

_Um._

After a moment, Ariadne let her arm rest around Philippa's shoulders as well. The child's live heat against her side wasn't enough to counter the chill of the container's wall at her back, but it was better than nothing.

Ariadne hummed softly for a while as Philippa's weight grew limper; eventually the small blonde head was pillowed on Ariadne's thigh, and she let the meandering tune trail off into silence.

_Now what, genius?_

She'd had time, earlier, to formulate, refine, and discard countless escape plans - all of them theoretical since she had almost no data on her current situation, let alone any opportunity to implement them. But Philippa's presence changed everything; what Ariadne might be willing to risk to gain her own freedom was not acceptable with a six-year-old to protect.

_You'll just have to come up with a new one. _She was, Ariadne reminded herself, the woman who'd impressed Dom, designed three levels of Dream on her first job, and put a bullet into the malevolent ghost in Cobb's head. Not to mention attracting first the attention, and then the devotion, of one of the smartest, most enigmatic, sexiest men she'd ever met.

_Arthur…I wish you were here._ Which was absurd, because then he'd be in the same fix, but she could picture his small smile and knew that he would understand exactly what she meant.

When they were together, she could do anything, survive anything, because he was there to back her up, just as she was for him.

_Are you looking for me? _He must be, by now. But did he know where to look? Had the tall man in the mask sent a ransom demand yet?

Would he be able to find her, with all the world to search?

And yet, if anyone could -

Ariadne sighed, and closed her eyes.

**xxxxx**

She knew by the ache in her muscles when the door clanked open that she still hadn't slept long, and the interruptions were really starting to piss her off. Philippa jerked awake at the sound and sat up, huddling closer to Ariadne as the tall weedy form of their captor filled the gap.

The gun in his hand was still riveting. "Up. Let's go," he said, gesturing at them with it.

Ariadne pushed slowly to her feet, reaching down a hand and feeling small fingers wrap around her own. "Where are we going?" She had no idea where the courage to ask had come from, but -

"Shut up." The words were flat rather than harsh. "Move it."

Philippa was pressing into her side. Ariadne raised her chin and marched forward, leaving the water bottle and the cuffs on the floor behind her and mentally daring him to make an issue of the latter.

He didn't. There was no reading his expression beneath the ski mask, but he merely stood aside and watched them pass.

The little sitting area was bare now, with no papers left. Ariadne slowed, not sure where to go next, but their kidnapper spoke behind her. "Straight ahead and wait by the door."

She had no idea what he wanted them to do, but Ariadne groped nonetheless for some way to slow him down. "Bathroom," she blurted. "If this is going to take long - "

She felt _ridiculous_, but Dreaming had taught her that sometimes you just had to forget dignity. Their captor hesitated.

"I have to go too," Philippa said in a small voice, her fingers so tight that her small nails were digging into Ariadne's skin. Ariadne raised her brows, giving the tall man her best challenging look. _Well?_

He gave a sort of twitching shrug, an irritated gesture. "Make it quick."

Ariadne obeyed, not wanting to give him time to change his mind. She let Philippa use the toilet first, turning her back to give the child a modicum of privacy, though Philippa didn't seem worried. It was a little harder to use it herself when there was someone else a few feet away, even if the other person was concentrating on washing her hands at a sink inches too tall for her, but Ariadne knew the value of emptying one's bladder before starting anything, be it a journey or a Dream.

She washed up hastily afterwards, wishing for lotion for her chapping hands; she always kept a bottle in her bag, but who knew where it was now.

The man was waiting when they emerged, arms folded but gun still in his hand, and a corner of Ariadne's mind took note of his posture; whatever affected his hand apparently didn't extend as far as his arm. Nonetheless, when they came out he uncrossed them, pointing the gun past them. "That way."

Beyond the lavatory by about ten yards was a door set in the wall of the warehouse, next to a much larger rolling garage door. Glancing back at their captor, Ariadne turned the knob.

Cold wet air rolled in. Outside was gray; concrete parking lot, cloudy sky, well-used van with its back doors open like wings. Ariadne looked quickly around, hoping against hope for the sight of someone she could shout to - if she dared - but there was no one, just the expanse of parking lot and another warehouse-type building opposite.

"In." Another gesture, but it was pretty clear anyway. Ariadne shot the man a look of dislike and went with Philippa to the back of the van; the little girl scrambled up over the bumper and in before Ariadne could think to try to lift her.

Ariadne followed with a little more grace. The van had no windows; the inside was lined with auto carpet so worn and stained that it was impossible to tell what color it might have been originally, but it smelled no worse than the odor of a vehicle that has sat closed up for a while. There were no seats; racks on the walls might once have held tools or other supplies. _Electrician's,_ Ariadne thought, _or maybe a plumber's._

"Sit." Their captor stepped up and into the van with the ease only long legs could produce, which made Ariadne dislike him just that much more. Philippa pressed herself against the wall at the front, obviously frightened, but the man ignored her, reaching up into the rack above Ariadne's head and bringing out another set of cuffs, this one joined by a long chain.

Ariadne shrank back a little, unable to help it. "I…I…that's not necessary," she said, hating the way her voice squeaked on _not_.

Without a word, the man dropped one cuff in her lap and cocked the revolver, aiming it at Philippa without even looking at the girl.

"All right! All right." Ariadne snatched up the cuff and slapped it around her wrist with shaking fingers. "See? It's on."

He uncocked the gun and put it in his waistband, then fastened the other cuff to the rack before jumping out of the van and slamming the doors shut.

The darkness was sudden, but not quite absolute; a little light leaked in around the doors' edges. Ariadne blew out a breath, dizzy with adrenaline and relief - and a nauseating fury that their captor should threaten a _child_ to get his way.

"You okay, kid?" she managed after a moment, her pulse still thundering.

"He's _mean,_" came the small voice, and Ariadne laughed, knowing it was half hysteria.

"You're absolutely right." Ariadne tested the chain, feeling up it to the rack overhead. It was, unfortunately, securely locked onto the rack, but the length gave her enough slack to rest her arm on her pulled-up knee and be somewhat comfortable. Harsh, but not cruel.

The van shifted slightly, and they both heard and felt a door slam. Then the engine roared awake, and a dingy light flickered on overhead.

"There's no seatbelts," Philippa said with dismay, and Ariadne laughed again.

"There's no _seats._" As the van lurched forward, she set her back firmly against the wall and held out her free hand. "If you want, we can sit together."

Philippa immediately crawled over and huddled up against Ariadne's side. Ariadne snugged her in close, knowing that it wouldn't help if the van collided with something, but it made her feel better.

"What's going to happen?" Philippa asked, and Ariadne looked down at her, once again unwilling to lie.

"I don't know." She bit her lip, then went on. "But I do know that your dad and your grandfather, and my friend, are looking for us."

Philippa nodded. "And they'll make the bad guy sorry."

Ariadne leaned her head back against the van's wall, heedless of the vibration against her skull, and smiled, because Philippa was right. "Yes. They will."**  
**


	3. Chapter 3

**Most of the characters and situations in this story belong to Christopher Nolan, Legendary Pictures, Syncopy, NBC, and other entities, and I do not have permission to borrow them. No infringement is intended in any way, and this story is not for profit. All others belong to me, and if you want to borrow them, you have to ask me first. Any errors are mine, all mine, no you can't have any.**

**The opinions expressed by characters in this story may or may not be those of the author.**

**Sorry about the delay; I had some minor health issues. Please note, this was written months before Japan's recent tragedies. I am choosing to sidestep the disasters rather than change my narrative; consider it an AU if you prefer. **

**Many thanks to Cincoflex for superb editing! **

**xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx**

It was old habit, sleeping when opportunity presented itself, but it still took an effort. Arthur made his eyes close and his breathing even out, and promised himself that he would only doze, in case of developments - not that he expected any.

Dom was well and truly sleeping, sprawled out on the bedroll in the belly of the military Airbus. Of course, the only reason he had succumbed to slumber was because Arthur had dosed his coffee, and Arthur knew he would pay for it later, but Dom had to sleep. _I need you sharp,_ would be Arthur's excuse when he woke. _Ariadne and Philippa can't afford less than our best. _

Which was also true.

It had taken some serious calling-in of favors to get this trip, especially at the last minute, but the need required it, and it had the bonus of being mostly legitimate; they were part of a cargo traveling to Yokota Air Base. And while Special Agent Harris could no doubt guess where they were going, she would spend her time and energy looking at the private and commercial flights. _As long as she doesn't stymie us on the other end, we're good._

She might, but Arthur was willing to bet that he and Dom would be on the ground and moving before she was connected to the right people in Japan, and he had already taken steps to insert a pair of decoys at the hotel should it prove necessary. He didn't blame Harris for trying to run things - it was her job, after all - but whoever was behind this was smart and squirrelly, and Arthur wasn't about to let Ariadne's life depend on the no doubt uneasy synthesis of two bureaucracies. Nor Philippa's.

_It's got something to do with extraction. And extractors are very, very good at getting away. _He knew that the hotel was only the first step; their adversary apparently wanted to play with them, which to a degree suited Arthur. _Games offer more opportunities to make mistakes. And if they do, I will find out. _

The kidnapper wanted something, that was clear, whether it was an extraction, money, or some kind of prolonged revenge._ If they'd just wanted to hurt us straight out, they would have killed the girls. _

He tried to keep the thought as a hope, but it still made him feel sick to his stomach. There was no end of torments that could be applied to the living, and the only encouraging thought there was that the abductor had not shown them any to date.

He had feelers out as well, carefully worded questions to any contact he could think of who might be able to help. Miles had made use of his own acquaintances still in the business, but Arthur didn't hold out much hope that they would hear anything of value.

Exhaustion nibbled at the edges of his consciousness. Arthur conjured up the last time he'd seen Ariadne; a wink and a slice of smile over her shoulder as she slipped out of the empty office where they'd performed their last extraction. They'd planned to meet up a day later back in London, but she'd decided to stay in Cleveland a little longer, pleading jet lag.

Though he suspected it was more a craving for American hamburgers.

It wasn't like he'd _worried,_ though he had missed her even for that one extra night; they were partners, to be sure, but she was a full adult and did as she pleased, and if it pleased her to stay Stateside one more day then there was nothing to argue about.

Now, however…Arthur had the sneaking suspicion that if - _when,_ of course it was when - they got her back he would have a very difficult time letting her out of his sight for long, let alone allowing an ocean's worth of distance between them.

And he could picture her reaction to that, could all but see her exasperated expression; his ears rang faintly at the imagined _I'll go where I damn well please, lover_ and his lips tingled at the kiss that would follow it, her silent promise to keep in touch all the same.

_Ariadne. Hold on_.

Her smile took him into sleep.

**x**

Yokota was chilly and sunny both. The two men left the base behind and headed into Tokyo, Dom handling the driving in the little rental car so Arthur could make calls. When Arthur finally put down his cellphone, Cobb glanced over. "Well?"

Arthur stared out the windshield, scenarios arranging themselves in his head. "My contact in the Tokyo police says that nothing's come down the pipeline yet. Either Harris hasn't gotten through, or it's being handled through another agency."

"What do you think?" Dom asked quietly, and Arthur glanced over at him. Dom's only comment regarding the mickey Arthur had slipped him had been _We'll discuss this later,_ which suited Arthur; they needed focus now.

"I think that unless she has a personal connection here, she'll work through the police, which gives us a bit more time." Arthur opened his pocket notebook, glancing at the writing within more out of habit than because he needed reminding. "Our decoys are in place, though, just in case. They should serve to distract the police if necessary."

Dom nodded, watching the road. He didn't ask whether their doubles would also fool their quarry, and with good reason; the answer was that they simply didn't know. It was a constant frustration to Arthur that he was working with so little data. Did the kidnapper know them personally, or just by reputation? Would the two Westerners checked into adjacent rooms - one tall and fair, one slender and dark - pass?

An hour or so later, one man checked in at the Tobu Narita Holiday Inn - tall, yes, and broad-shouldered, but with a hue to his skin that suggested a rich heritage and a stoop that bespoke either age or arthritis. He spoke Japanese with a French accent and looked neither left nor right when he went up to his room.

Meanwhile, a dark-haired man in the uniform of a delivery service and the gum-chewing enthusiasm of someone fresh out of adolescence backed up a truck to the hotel's loading dock and began wheeling out boxes of cabbage, cheerfully ignoring the various protests that no one had ordered any such thing.

Once in his room, Dom straightened with a faint groan and set his case on the bed, pulling out a laptop and booting it up as quickly as possible. Within moments he had a live video feed of their decoys' rooms, and he brought the laptop into the bathroom with him as he washed and changed - he was grateful to Arthur for finding them transportation so quickly, but eleven hours on a military cargo plane improved no one's personal aroma.

The two men Arthur had hired to play them - Dom never ceased to marvel at what Arthur could pull off at a moment's notice - were, as instructed, staying in their rooms. Eventually, if nothing happened, one would go to the gym, and then join the other for dinner in the hotel restaurant, all to give the kidnapper time to contact them. _It's amazing what some people will do for money, _Dom thought with a strong sense of irony. _Especially if you tell them it might end up on television._

He hoped Arthur was succeeding in getting in through the back door, as it were, though he wasn't sure what the point was. _This place is huge - we could search it for a week and still not be halfway through. _

No, the truth was that they were at their quarry's mercy. _We got here, you son of a bitch. _

_Your move._

Nothing happened, though. For hours. Dom kept watching, replaying memories of Philippa in his head to keep his thoughts from running in darker circles - laughing, crying, fighting with her brother, nursing as a newborn.

Falling asleep in his arms after a day at the fair.

Taking her first steps across the kitchen floor, uncertain but determined.

Her first Christmas, her first birthday, and all the others too, since there hadn't been enough yet for the memories to blur.

_Pippa._ Her name was a plea now, a pain-laced denial that anything could happen to his little girl. _Please, please, let me get her back safely. _

It felt like forever, but eventually the rest of the plan fell into place, and first one decoy and then the other left their rooms.

A few minutes after the second departure, Dom's phone beeped for a new message. He scanned the text while keeping half an eye on the laptop screen; it was from Arthur, telling him that the decoys were sitting down to dinner. Dom wondered with a grim humor whether Arthur was playing waiter again - a role the point man loathed - and kept watching.

The second text was more interesting. _Police just arrested both,_ it said.

_Tipoff?_ Dom sent back.

_Unknown,_ came the response. _No protest though._

Good. Their decoys were doing exactly what they'd been hired to do; if they continued to obey, they would only reveal their true names once they were in Interrogation. Since all they knew was that they had been hired - and very well paid - to perform their roles, they would be nothing but a dead end for the police.

_Harris might put two and two together if she gets this far, but by then we should know more._

A flicker of movement brought his attention back to the laptop screen. In the Dom-decoy's room, the TV had just flickered to life, despite the fact that there was no one in the room.

Dom took a risk, followed his instincts, and closed the other window, expanding the first to focus on the image. It was no-signal static at first, but then that cleared to show what looked to Dom to be a whiteboard. _Hello, Cobb,_ it read.

He froze.

A black-gloved hand came into the picture, and showed it was actually a flip-chart by peeling up the paper on which the words were written. Underneath was another message. _Thanks for coming. _

Dom fumbled for his phone, trying to text without looking down at the screen. The hand paused long enough for him to read the message several times, then flipped up the second page.

_I'm glad to see you can follow instructions._ Another page. _Here's how it's going to go._

His hands were so tight around the phone that something cracked, and Dom set it hastily aside, winding his fingers together instead.

_You and your bitch are going to Pretoria next. _

_You have exactly forty-eight hours to get there. _

_When you do, I'll let you know what you have to do next. _

The spasm of rage was sharp. Getting from Japan to South Africa in two days, with no advance planning, was going to be almost impossible. _But it's not like we have a choice. _

The glove moved again. _Because you've been good boys, you get a reward._

Dom sat up straight as the image changed, snapping from a flip-chart to a weird long room. Sitting on the floor were two small figures, one with light hair, one with dark.

His breath caught in his throat. As Dom watched, Ariadne took off her sweater and draped it over Philippa, who promptly snuggled against Ariadne in a move so familiar it made Dom's eyes prickle. Then the flip-chart was back.

_Evidence of my bona fides. _

_The clock's ticking, Cobb. _

The TV screen went dark.

**xxxx**

The ride was long, and bumpy enough at times to make Ariadne very grateful for the thin carpeting. Philippa fell asleep again almost at once with an ease that Ariadne envied, and she cradled the girl's head in her lap and decided that her leg falling asleep was worth not having to keep Philippa distracted.

She herself drowsed, waking every time the van rounded a corner or jolted over a rough patch, but for the most part there was only the steady smooth hum of wheels on highway.

_I wonder where we are._

It was hard to tell how much time was passing, but eventually the van slowed, and Ariadne heard gravel crunching under the wheels. The silence when the engine shut off made her ears ring.

She heard the driver's door open; a moment later the back doors opened as well, letting in a gush of fresh, frigid air.

The ski mask was a little askew, Ariadne noticed, but that was all she had time to see before their captor was jumping up into the van and reaching for the cuff locked on the rack.

Philippa stirred, whimpering, and Ariadne's attention was divided between her and the muttered curse floating down as the man fumbled with the lock. When it finally snapped open, he let the chain slither down into her lap. "Out," he said briefly.

Ariadne stood, taking a moment to stretch stiffened muscles. She managed to wind the cuff chain around her wrist to get it out of the way, then helped a sleepy Philippa to her own feet. Their kidnapper leapt back out of the van, the gun again in his working hand, and Ariadne followed more slowly, turning to lift Philippa out.

They were in the middle of nowhere. The sky was still gray, and it was colder than when they'd left the warehouse; there was nothing around but a flat expanse of scrubby dead grass, and a highway about half a mile away.

When they rounded the van, Ariadne saw a rest stop that looked as though it had been closed for at least a year; the windows were all dark, and there were weeds growing up around the curbs.

Their captor made them walk in front of him towards the building. Ariadne wondered briefly if he meant to kill them and leave their bodies here, in this abandoned spot, but when he reared back and kicked open the ladies' room door with one blow, she decided not.

He gestured them inside. "Five minutes. Don't make me come in and get you."

The rest stop was the minimal sort, nothing more than bathrooms and a few trash cans; Ariadne was disappointed to see no map that might have given her a clue to their location. Rather to her surprise, the water was still turned on, and there was even toilet paper left in one stall. She and Philippa both made use of the facilities, and Ariadne found time to bless the fact that she had finished her period just the week prior.

The water that sputtered out of the faucets was icy cold, and there were no paper towels, but it was better than nothing, and Ariadne found herself even a little grateful to their captor for giving them the break. She caught herself short, angry at the emotion. _What is this, Stockholm syndrome? Watch it._

He was waiting for them when they came out, and walked them back to the van without a word. Ariadne lifted Philippa back into the van and climbed in after her, walking over to the rack and attaching the cuff herself; it seemed more expedient, and kept her from having to endure him standing over her.

Or coming nearer Philippa with that gun.

Their captor nodded once, as if approving, and set one foot on the van's bumper, leaning forward slightly. "Listen up. We're going to stop for food soon, and I don't want to hear a _peep_ out of either of you. Behave yourselves, and you'll get fed. Make a fuss and you'll suffer." He rapped the side of the van with his knuckles. "Nobody'll hear you clearly through this thing anyway, so don't piss me off for nothing."

With that, he straightened, and a second later the doors slammed shut again.

When the light came on with the engine, Ariadne saw Philippa sitting at the front of the van, looking pouty and sleepy both. "I'm _cold,_" she whined.

Ariadne made herself chuckle. "C'mere then, kid, we'll be warmer together." When Philippa obeyed, Ariadne buttoned up the sweater that hung gaping over the girl's t-shirt, then began trying to work the tangles out of Philippa's hair using just her fingers. Her stomach was gnawing itself with hunger, and she figured Philippa was no better. _I hope we get to that food soon. _

It took, in her estimation, almost an hour before the monotonous hum of highway turned to the stops and starts of smaller streets. It was hard to tell what might be passing by outside, but eventually Ariadne heard muffled voices and thought that perhaps they were at a drive-through.

She was very badly tempted to set up that _fuss._ _He has no idea just how loud I can scream._ But success was not guaranteed, and there was Philippa to consider. Ariadne hadn't forgotten the way he'd threatened the child earlier, and while part of her argued that he needed both of them in good shape to further his scheme, another part pointed out that just one might do.

_Besides, you don't want to find out the hard way. _

So she stayed silent, letting Philippa's little fingers tease out her own snarls and bravely hiding her winces at the tugs. It made her conscious of how much she wanted a bath, a toothbrush, clean clothes. _Maybe when we get where we're going._

The van doors opened once more, this time to let their captor deposit two bags and a cardboard drinks tray holding two cups. Philippa fetched them as soon as the engine and the light came back on - Ariadne's chain didn't extend that far - and immediately opened the bag decorated with cartoon animals.

Ariadne got the plainer one, realizing as she peered at it in the dim light that wherever they were, it was probably not the United States, because the language on the bag was French. Nor did she recognize the logo of the fast food restaurant.

But it was food, fresh even, and she found napkins and straws too, and they set up a little picnic on the floor of the van. There was even a cheap toy in Philippa's bag, obviously part of the meal package, and she was delighted with the garishly-colored plastic pony.

Ariadne investigated the meals and found burgers and fries, nothing unusual, and though the orange soda was revolting, she drank it anyway for the liquid. _Good thing I'm not a vegetarian._

Philippa finished all of her meal - after daintily picking the sliced pickle off her bun - and ate half of Ariadne's fries as well. Ariadne let her. She could bear hunger better than a six-year-old.

The toy kept Philippa occupied after the meal was over, too. Ariadne packed up the trash into one of the bags and sucked on the ice remaining in her cup as Philippa galloped the pony over the hills and dales of her own legs and had it fight off invisible enemies. In fact, it reminded Ariadne of some of her own childhood games, though she'd used a small toy bear and stolen her brothers' Legos to make a fort…

The ice was long gone and the smaller cup turned into a little stable by the time the van halted again. At the sound of the driver's door opening, Ariadne expected the back doors to open too, but nothing happened at first; it was almost ten minutes' twitchy wait in the dark before the doors split to let in the cold air again.

It was night; the light that came in was harsh and made the shadows sharp-edged. Ariadne held the suddenly-silent Philippa close and they both waited as their captor jumped up into the van again.

In his hand was a hypodermic, and Ariadne froze. _No. Oh, no._

Dreadful scenarios chased their way through her head, and she shifted Philippa to one side, braced to fight him if he came _one step closer_ to the girl with that needle -

"Relax," he said sardonically. "It's just plain somnacin."

Ariadne clenched her fists, staring up at him defiantly. "You can't give that to her." She had no idea if the Dream sedative had even been tested on children, let alone deemed safe.

"It's not for her." He stooped, and his right arm shot out, somehow catching behind her shoulder and flipping her over onto her stomach with a force that drove the breath from her. Philippa screamed, scrambling away, and before Ariadne could fight back a boot pressed against her lower spine and she felt the sharp bite of the needle in her backside, puncturing straight through cloth to skin.

The last thing she saw was the pony, peeking wide-eyed out of its sticky stable.

**xxxx**

"We're not going to make it," Dom said for the hundredth time, and the fear behind his words was the only thing keeping Arthur from allowing his temper off leash and his hand to smack his old friend upside the head.

"He's just playing with us," Arthur pointed out again, willing his own doubts to subside. "If we miss his deadline and he follows through the game's over. He wants us on the hook too much to stop now."

He'd found a private plane again for this last leg of a protracted, frantic journey, bouncing from country to country across half the globe as they struggled to meet the kidnapper's demand. Neither of them had slept, or eaten much, and it showed.

Dom made an inarticulate noise and rubbed his eyes with the heels of his hands. Arthur tried to ignore him and reran the video once more, like he had already for hours, just to catch that one glimpse of Ariadne. It was hard to pick up any detail - in fact, the only way he could be sure it was her was because he'd long since memorized the way she moved - but it _was_ her, and it was a thread-thin lifeline in the midst of terrifying chaos.

He'd never expected to feel like this about anyone. Arthur liked his life simple and his relationships, such as they were, uncomplicated; the few exceptions had shrunk to one when Mal had died. He'd always favored sophisticated, elegant, _tall_ women for his brief liaisons.

Getting broadsided, metaphorically if not literally, by a short, plainspoken, practical woman barely out of girlhood had been a shock even if he'd seen it coming. Not that Ariadne couldn't do elegant quite well, when she chose.

But the rewards had proven worth the complications. His life was messier now, enlivened by a coffee fiend who hated mornings, wore ugly bedsocks, and had a bad habit of leaving her shoes just anywhere. And she made him laugh more than he ever had before.

Loneliness hadn't frightened him until he'd met Ariadne.

The thought of _losing_ her was unbearable.

So he buried it in practicalities. There were plenty of them to take his attention at the moment; just getting himself and Dom from one side of the world to the other had been a massive effort that had required almost all his resources and a truly obscene amount of money. And in the few moments when he wasn't planning their next leg, Arthur was mentally sharpening knives for use on the bastard who'd dared to take Ariadne and a helpless child.

Though given Ariadne's brains and general fierceness, he wouldn't be surprised to find she'd gotten in a few licks of her own…

"Make some coffee," he told Dom now, more to give the man something to do than because he needed more caffeine himself. "The galley should be unlocked." He'd been able to borrow the executive jet and its pilot, but the steward had not been available. It didn't matter. Getting to Pretoria was the important thing, not having someone to serve them mimosas and endive salad.

Dom shot him a glare, but obeyed, disappearing into the tiny galley and beginning to rummage in the cupboards. Arthur sighed and leaned back in his chair, closing his aching eyes for a few minutes and trying to summon up more strength. They were going to need all their wits when they landed.

_We might actually make it._ He glanced at his watch; the hour it showed was not accurate for their current location, but it told him how much time had passed since the video in Tokyo, and they still had almost two hours before the deadline. Whether they would land before then, he didn't know, but he figured they had a decent chance.

_Whoever he is, this guy knows us._ Well enough to have anticipated the decoys; well enough to have known that Arthur would bug their rooms. Arthur didn't like that; it gave their opponent far too much advantage.

The click of porcelain on wood and the rich smell of coffee made him open his eyes. Dom was just setting down the cup in front of Arthur, another in his other hand. "There's biscuits if you want them."

Arthur shook his head, their last meal of cheap rice and beans still sitting leadenly in his stomach. He sipped at the fragrant brew out of habitual politeness and watched from under dropped lids as Dom drank half his cup without even noticing the heat.

"Look," Arthur said at last. "There's no way this guy can know the exact moment we reach Pretoria. He may have a source in Customs, but for all he knows we're landing in Johannesburg and driving, or maybe we came in on a tramp steamer. My guess is that he'll go ahead and act as if we've made it, and tell us what to do next."

Dom's expression was more weary than skeptical. "I hope you're right," was all he said.

_I do too._ Arthur stirred his coffee idly, because it was better than fidgeting, and ran the video over again. Dom reached across the little table and angled the laptop, and they watched together in silence.

**x**

Pretoria was cool in the moments before dawn, but the air held the promise of warmth later. The two of them trotted down the plane's steps and into the airport, and made it through Customs in a remarkably short time, though Arthur put it down to the hour.

The sun was just cresting the horizon when they emerged again, and Arthur's watch beeped discreetly. A moment later, Dom's cellphone rang. He glanced quickly at the display, but his headshake told Arthur that the incoming call had a block on the number.

Arthur was grateful for the little bit of software that let Dom's phone handle two wireless headsets at once. Dom's curt "Hello?" was doubled, reaching Arthur's unencumbered ear and the device in the other at the same time.

"_Glad to see you made it," _came the mechanized voice. _"Though you do look the worse for wear."_

Dom stiffened, glancing around, and Arthur put a hand on his arm and shook his own head. _He's playing us,_ he mouthed. A journey like the one the two of them had just taken would leave anyone somewhat bedraggled; it was an easy guess.

"We're here," Dom said shortly. "What now?"

"_Oh, I think you deserve a break,"_ the voice said mockingly. _"Take a day or two to recuperate."_

Arthur very carefully kept himself from responding to that, despite the rage that flared up from its simmer beneath his breastbone. Dom merely closed his eyes, though the whitened lines around his nose told Arthur that he was fighting just as hard for control. "I need my daughter," Dom said, his voice perfectly even. "I need to know she's alive." His hand tightened on the phone. "I need to know they're both alive."

"_Greedy,"_ the voice chided. _"Your family always meant more to you than anything, didn't it, Cobb? And look where it got you." _

Arthur frowned, arrested by the comment. They'd already established that the kidnapper knew them, but the taunt nagged at something he couldn't quite bring forward. He cursed his own exhaustion, and kept listening.

"_If you want that prize you'll have to work for it. You can take the next step when you know who I am." _

Arthur had intended to let Dom do the communicating, since Dom was clearly the one the kidnapper was focused on, but he couldn't let that pass. "How do we get in touch with you when we do?"

There was a second's pause, and then, _"Confident. Watch it, Arthur. Confidence was Cobb's downfall."_ Another pause. _"When you know who I am, you'll know how to contact me."_

Before Arthur could challenge the statement, the _click_ in their ears told him that the kidnapper had hung up.

They stared at each other for a long moment of desolation. Then Arthur set his jaw and hitched his bag higher. "Let's go."**  
**


	4. Chapter 4

**Most of the characters and situations in this story belong to Christopher Nolan, Legendary Pictures, Syncopy, NBC, and other entities, and I do not have permission to borrow them. No infringement is intended in any way, and this story is not for profit. All others belong to me, and if you want to borrow them, you have to ask me first. Any errors are mine, all mine, no you can't have any. **

**The opinions expressed by characters in this story may or may not be those of the author. **

**Argh, I'm usually much better about updates than this. More health issues, hopefully now resolved. **

**Cincoflex**** encouraged, gently corrected, and guided!  
**

**xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx**

The nice thing about somnacin was that it had few side-effects. Ariadne woke as she might have from a practice Dream, smooth and quick, and opening her eyes to an unfinished ceiling overhead - beams and pipes in a straight-edged confusion. She sat up abruptly, horribly confused, and groped for her totem, but it wasn't there - was she Dreaming, or had the whole thing been a -

"Reeannie?" The high-pitched voice was familiar, and Ariadne focused on the child a few feet away, letting out her breath in a rush.

_Dammit, it's real._

"I'm awake," she mumbled, and scrubbed at her face with both cold hands. She almost wished she weren't.

But Philippa's presence meant she couldn't curl up again and pretend that the whole thing would disappear the moment she closed her eyes. Ariadne dropped her hands and sighed again.

Philippa, at least, seemed unharmed, still dressed in the increasingly grubby outfit she'd worn when Ariadne had first seen her. She was sitting on a very faded rug, pony in hand, and seemed less alarmed than puzzled.

Ariadne took a quick look around. Basement, her training told her; cement walls, open ceiling, slightly dank atmosphere. The one small window up against said ceiling was another clue, though it was dark. She had been placed on a camp cot; another two sat perpendicular to it, with blankets and pillows placed neatly on top.

The room held a table and three chairs as well, and what looked to be a makeshift kitchen. Open stairs led upwards across the room, and the area beyond the stairs was dark.

Ariadne tried to get a grip on her whirling thoughts. "What happened?" she asked Philippa. "Are you all right?"

"Yeah," Philippa said, with the air of one humoring a silly question. She pranced the pony around the worn pattern on the rug, and Ariadne licked her lips and tried again.

"Philippa, what happened after…after I fell asleep?"

The girl shrugged. "The bad guy told me to get out, an' picked you up. And we came downstairs, and he said you'd wake up soon." The pony pranced again. "It was scary."

This last was said in a smaller voice, and Ariadne bit her lip. "Was that a long time ago?"

Philippa shrugged. "Nope."

Which could really mean almost anything, Ariadne thought with exasperation, but there was no point in trying to get something more precise out of someone whom she wasn't even sure could tell time yet. "Well." She swung her legs off the cot. "Let's see what's down here, huh?"

She stood, cautiously, but she didn't even feel stiff. Ariadne combed her hair out of her face with her fingers and took a better look at the place.

A card table with three folding chairs, yes; beyond the edge of the rug, in one corner, a battered, heavier table next to a laundry sink. The table held a small microwave, a few boxes, and some paper plates and plastic utensils. Beneath the table was a cube that Ariadne assumed was a small fridge.

She wasn't sure whether to be grateful for the thought, or apprehensive at what looked like a long-term setup.

She went up the stairs, which were sturdy wood; the door at the top was also sturdy, and was firmly locked. Ariadne didn't bother to do more than rattle the knob just yet.

Beyond the bottom of the stairs was an unlit area, but a bit of groping at the wall produced a light switch beneath her fingers, and Ariadne switched it on. It was a short cement hallway, utterly featureless; at the end was another door. This one was not locked, and beyond it was a small, chilly, unadorned bathroom - sink, toilet, and - Ariadne almost cheered - scratched clawfoot tub. A large cardboard box sat next to the latter; when she opened it, Ariadne found cheap towels, extra toilet paper, toothbrushes and paste, and even clothing.

It was the clothes that gave her pause. Ariadne sat back on her heels and spread the items out for a better look. T-shirts, sweatpants, underwear, and socks, six of each…in three sizes.

_That's why there's three of everything,_ Ariadne thought slowly. _There's supposed to be a third victim here. _And given the size of the clothes, the third one was supposed to be even smaller than Philippa.

"_I __**bit**__ them, and he got away."_

Ariadne nodded slowly, and folded all the clothes back up, putting the smallest size at the bottom of the box. _Good for you, Philippa._

She went back out to the main room and took one of the chairs, putting it beneath the window and standing cautiously on it to get a better look. It still wasn't quite tall enough, but Ariadne chinned herself on the wide ledge - the window was sunk into the wall - and took in what details she could.

It was old, that was her first impression; a metal frame holding six small panes of glass, though she wasn't sure whether they were painted over or whether it was just completely dark outside. The window seemed to be painted shut, and was fixed with a hinge at the bottom. Even assuming she could open it, the gap would be too small for her to get through.

Ariadne dropped cautiously back down and put the chair back where she'd found it. Philippa was now having a dialogue with her pony, so Ariadne skirted her and went to investigate the kitchen area.

The boxes were cereal and macaroni and cheese, their labels also in French. The cube fridge held milk and a bag of apples. Ariadne took one of the latter, and went to wash it in the big sink, noting as she did so that there were no knives, just plastic forks and spoons.

The apple was the mushy supermarket kind, but it was a change. Ariadne leaned back against the sink and regarded Philippa. "Do you want any of this apple?"

Philippa shook her head without even looking up. Ariadne decided that proper nutrition was an issue for later, and ate it all herself.

Two hours later she had coaxed the girl through a bath and a brushing of teeth, and had dressed her in one of the clean sets of clothes. Philippa had apparently accepted Ariadne as the new authority in her life, and didn't argue too much. Ariadne set her up with a bowl and spoon, so she could feed the pony dinner, and retreated to the bathroom.

_I'm not sure about this._ Ariadne eyed the tub longingly. She hadn't had a proper wash in she didn't know how long; her clothes were awful, and she wanted a bath more than just about anything besides freedom at the moment. But their captor could return at any time, and while he hadn't shown any interest in her other than as a game piece, she hardly wanted to make herself vulnerable in his presence.

On the other hand, she was also tired, stressed, filthy, and sick of accommodating the whims of the weirdo who'd now drugged her repeatedly and stolen her from her life.

Ariadne set her jaw, and turned the taps.

She brushed her teeth, long and hard, as the tub filled, pleased that there didn't seem to be any shortage of hot water. There was soap, the cheap kind bought in packs, and off-brand baby shampoo. No comb, but Ariadne figured she could improvise.

She compromised by leaving the door half-open, so she could hear if anyone started coming down the stairs, and slid into the hot water with a pleased groan. The tub wasn't very big - Arthur, for instance, would have had his knees sticking out of the water - but it was just long enough for her to submerge everything but her head, even if she had to pretzel slightly to do it.

She stayed in the water until it cooled. Since the tub was metal, that took less time than she might have hoped, but it was enough to relax muscles tightened with strain and fear. Ariadne ducked her head to wash her hair and then scrubbed the rest of herself with the soap, wishing again for lotion as she dried off with the thin towel.

Despite dry skin, however, it was a positive pleasure to put on clean clothes, cheap or not. Ariadne left her dirty ones in a heap with Philippa's, not sure what to do with them just yet, and went back out.

Philippa was asleep on the rug, pony still clutched in one small hand. Ariadne shook her head, smiling, and lifted the girl onto one of the cots. Philippa did no more than smack her lips, and Ariadne pulled the blanket carefully over her and the pony both and tucked them in. Then she went to turn a fork into a comb and try to take the snarls out of her hair before it dried.

Inevitably, her thoughts drifted to Arthur. Wondering what he was doing just then was too painful, so Ariadne pulled out memories instead, precious moments hoarded like gems in the depths of her mind. The first time he'd kissed her, and the second; walking down a night-shadowed waterfront with him and feeling his gloved fingers fold around hers; the teasing quirk of his mouth over the expanse of a chessboard, and the delicious surprise when she'd bested him; the good clean smell of his skin and the way he said her name. The particular flavor of him in a working Dream, and the exquisite care he always took when she let him set her lines for her.

She bit back the tears, put down the fork, and wrapped herself in the blanket, daring sleep to come.

**xxxxx**

"Will you sit down and let me think?" Arthur snapped.

Dom ignored him and kept pacing, long strides eating up the width of their hotel suite. A decent meal and a few hours of broken sleep had rested them somewhat, but frustration was mounting. Arthur usually kept his cool longer than almost anyone, but he was fraying.

Dom considered himself to have gone beyond fraying hours before, and was now deep into unraveling. It really did feel like that, his soul stretched between his son, safe at home in the United States, and his daughter, lost somewhere out in the world. He wasn't sure how long he could go before the thread parted entirely.

_Arthur's in the same boat,_ he reminded himself. It wasn't quite the same anguish as losing a child, but he knew how protective his old friend could get…and Ariadne was so young. She was a capable woman, Dom knew that, but her size and youth provoked the response nonetheless.

Arthur muttered something under his breath and scribbled in his notebook. They were ostensibly brainstorming, trying to figure out their opponent's identity, but panic was making it hard to concentrate. Dom was taking it out in pacing at the moment; Arthur's die sat near his hand on the table, and every so often he would roll it. Not so much to confirm reality, Dom thought, but as a nervous fidget.

"He's an extractor," Arthur said again, raking his hand through his no-longer-crisp hair. "We know that. We both know him."

"If it is a _him_," Dom reminded him. "Just because Ariadne was taken by a guy, that doesn't mean - "

"I know, I know," Arthur retorted impatiently. "I'm keeping it in mind. But the odds are, it's a guy."

Dom had to concede that. Extraction as a profession did seem to attract more men than women, though he had no idea why and at the moment didn't care.

"Probably someone we've both worked with," Dom noted. Again. "Not just someone who knows us by reputation."

Arthur nodded, and wrote. "Someone who, in theory, we know well enough to identify from clues we - in theory - already have." Eyes on his notebook, he rolled the die again, not even glancing at the face as it stopped.

"Somebody who hates us," Dom said softly. He stopped walking to rub his aching temples. "Somebody who wants us to suffer."

Arthur's mouth twitched, all the acknowledgment he was willing to give.

"This career attracts way too many psychos," Dom added reflectively, which won him a snort.

"Even as thee and me?" Arthur tossed down his pen and sat back in his chair, stretching out his legs. Exhaustion had left dark smudges beneath his eyes despite the sleep they'd managed. "He knows how to hurt us, but what else has he told us?"

"I don't know." The momentary faint humor fled, and Dom resumed his pacing. "I don't know anything any more."

"There's something there, I just can't see it." Arthur pinched his eyes shut. "Tokyo. Pretoria. I swear it's there, but - "

"Japan and South Africa? I don't see the connection." Dom grimaced. It felt more like their opponent had just chosen to send them as far afield as he could, to taunt them, to -

"That's it." Arthur sat up, eyes going wide. "That's _it_. Japan and South Africa."

Dom halted again, recognizing the light of insight in Arthur's face. "What?"

"Cobol Engineering. Proclus Global." Arthur turned one hand palm-up. "You don't see it?"

Dom frowned at him. "Proclus? You don't think _Saito's_ behind this? He's not even - "

"Not Saito. _Think,_ Dom. Who was with us in both places, both jobs? The _only_ one."

Dom felt cold wash over him. "Nash."

Arthur nodded. "He was the reason Saito made us. And Saito threw him to the wolves while we walked away."

"I heard he was dead," Dom said doubtfully, but his protest was weak. Arthur was right, all the clues _did_ fit.

"He fell off the radar, but that doesn't mean he died," Arthur countered, reaching for the laptop computer that sat idling at the far end of the table and pulling towards himself. "He always used an e-mail drop box. If it's still functioning - "

"Are you sure?" Dom asked, fear rising. "If we're wrong, the girls…"

"If we're wrong, then nothing will happen. But we're not wrong." Arthur tapped rapidly on the keyboard. "There." He pushed back from the table and looked up at Dom again. "Now…"

"…We wait," Dom sighed.

**xxxxx**

Captivity in a more luxurious location - comparatively - presented the same problem all the same, Ariadne discovered when they woke. To wit, boredom. Their new cell had more space and the basic creature comforts, but there were no books, no paper or pen, no TV or radio or Internet, no toys. And while she could have worked around boredom herself, Philippa's capacity for self-amusement was limited.

Ariadne knew few stories and wasn't very good at making them up, and Philippa quickly grew bored with being the storyteller herself. Breakfast didn't take long, and cleanup consisted of depositing the used utensils in the little trash can by the sink.

Ariadne occupied them both for a little while with washing their dirty clothes in the tub and hanging them up to dry, and found a prize in the process - two crayons in Philippa's jeans pocket.

With those, and the boxes Ariadne cannibalized from their food stores, she was able to create a crude little town of rough cardboard buildings, carefully decorated in green and brown by Philippa. It took hours, which was frustrating, but Ariadne tried to look on it as a bonus, because every hour that passed with Philippa absorbed was an hour in which Philippa was not whining.

_What would I give for a good utility knife? Hell, a pair of safety scissors would do._ But she made do with careful tears, wishing at the same time for tape or glue as well.

And all the while, in the back of her mind, was the knowledge of time passing, and a faint queasy wondering when their captor would return, or even if.

_I haven't seen anybody else involved with this. What if he gets hit by a bus? We could starve to death down here._

But before they got as far as what Ariadne was arbitrarily thinking of as lunch, she heard footsteps overhead, and then a key in a lock. The door at the top of the stairs opened.

Philippa ceased her play at the sound. As their captor's skinny legs descended the stairs, she got up and went to stand behind Ariadne, peering around her without a word. Ariadne, who was finding that having someone smaller than her to protect was giving her more courage than she might otherwise have, folded her arms and lifted her chin.

He was still wearing the damned ski mask, and didn't pause as he came down, two grocery bags dangling from his right wrist and the gun held steadily in his left hand. Ariadne didn't take her eyes from him as he crossed the few yards to the kitchen area and set down the bags on the table, but he seemed to have lost some of the menacing intensity he'd had before.

Very obviously, he looked them over, then nodded once, as if to himself. "You need anything?"

The question startled Ariadne, and she had to scramble to reply. "Uh - a, a comb, some lotion. Something to read, maybe_._"

He tilted his head. "I'll keep it in mind." There was a hint of sarcasm, but only a hint, and Ariadne relaxed slightly. She was tempted to add _freedom_ to the list, but restrained herself.

From behind Ariadne came a small voice, but a determined one. _"Toys."_

Ariadne almost laughed. Behind the mask, the man's muscles shifted, and she wondered if it was a smile. He nodded once more, and without another word went back up the stairs.

The sound of the lock turning was almost a relief. Ariadne blew out a breath and looked down at her charge, who was looking back up at her. "Well. That was weird."

"Yup." Philippa seemed to shake off the encounter with that word, as if defining it had summed it up, and went back to her little village, against which the eye-searing pink of her pony was a stark contrast.

Ariadne listened to the footsteps cross the floor overhead, but heard no other sound - no door or engine. She gave him about ten minutes, and then went up the stairs herself. There was no better time to look around than just after he'd left.

The door was thick, and solid wood. The hinges were on the other side and the lock was heavy. Ariadne peered at it in the dimness, knowing it was hopeless; even with more light and the proper tools, she had no idea how to pick a lock. Arthur might, and Eames probably did, but they weren't there.

_And if they were, circumstances would be different anyway._ Ariadne knelt on the steps and tried to look through the crack under the door, but all she could see was a line of linoleum. And all that told her was that the room beyond had strong odds of being a kitchen.

Sighing, she went back down, and this time cleared the kitchen table of objects so she could wrestle it across the floor to the spot beneath the window.

It wasn't painted over; the light that had started leaking in hours earlier had proven that. But it was firmly glued with paint around the edges, to the point where the frame wasn't always visible beneath the coating. _If I had something sharp - _

Ariadne blinked. She'd assumed that the lack of knives, even plastic ones, had been due to her captor's wish to keep weapons out of her hands, but now she wondered if he'd been just that thorough.

And then dismissed the thought. _Nah. I couldn't fit through here without pulling the whole thing out of the wall, and maybe not even then. _

…_But Philippa could._

The idea was alarming. Ariadne glanced over her shoulder at the girl, who was rearranging the cardboard town, then looked back out again.

She'd barely glanced out, being more interested in the window itself, but there wasn't much to see anyway. The window was set in a half-circle well bounded by ribbed metal, and was thick with weeds and dead leaves. The only thing Ariadne could see over the top of the well was a slice of cloudy sky.

_There could be anything out there, and I can't tell._

She grimaced, and revised her statement. Wherever they were was fairly isolated; there was no sound coming in from outside, no rush of traffic or voices. They could be almost anywhere in the world - anywhere with a temperate climate, at least, since there was no air conditioning or heater running.

_This is getting me nowhere._

Ariadne jumped down and returned the table to its place, setting the microwave back on top and examining the bags their captor had brought. Bread, mayonnaise, mustard, cheese and ham slices from a deli; graham crackers; a big bottle of apple juice; a small bag of assorted mini candy bars. Ariadne sorted through it, a little perplexed at the juice and candy. _It's almost like he wants Philippa to be comfortable._

She put the meat and cheese and juice into the refrigerator, not entirely pleased by the thought. It would be easier to keep him a complete villain. But he'd gotten the child's meal the day before, when he could have just ordered two of everything…

_Yeah, and he also aimed a gun at her to make me put on the handcuff. Get a grip. He's violent, dangerous, and possibly out of his skull._ Huffing, she slammed the fridge shut and went to join Philippa on the rug.

They didn't see him for the rest of the day, which Ariadne knew was passing only by the amount of light coming through the window. She fixed them both sandwiches for lunch, and later macaroni and cheese for dinner; checked the clothes draped on the tub for dryness, and then moved them to the stair banister instead; played tag with Philippa to exercise them both, which resulted in dizziness in the small space and lots of giggles; and tried not to think just how crazy spending _days_ in a basement with a six-year-old was going to make her.

_Assuming it is days. For all I know Arthur and Dom are putting together the ransom right now, and tomorrow we'll be on our way home. _

Except, and she had no logical reasons to back the feeling up, she knew it wasn't as simple as ransom.

_This is personal._

It wasn't like Arthur didn't have enough money to make the prospect attractive. And Ariadne was pretty sure that Dom was flush too; neither man was extravagant, and living on the run didn't offer a lot of opportunities to spend money for much besides survival.

But it just didn't feel right.

She pondered the issue as she supervised another round of teeth brushing and tucked the sleepy girl into one of the cots, sitting on the floor next to it and singing softly until Philippa fell asleep, the child uncaring of the fact that Ariadne couldn't really carry a tune.

Ariadne wasn't sleepy yet, so she rose cautiously and prowled around the space, restless and yet grateful for a little time alone. It had been hard to concentrate on any one thought for long, but now she could do some real pondering.

The first thing to come to mind was the oddity of the basement. It had been nagging at her all day, underneath the surface, but she hadn't had the leisure to really bring the idea out and concentrate on it. Now -

_Unless this house is a really weird shape, there's more to this basement than I'm seeing._

It was her architect's training that had been trying to get her attention. The basement ran what she thought was probably the width of the building above it, from the window to the bathroom at the end of the little hall, but its length was that of one room only. Ariadne knew that not all houses had complete basements, but the style of this one said otherwise. _It should be twice as large, at least._

Curious, she began exploring the wall, starting down by the bathroom. The walls were brick painted thickly over, a cream gone dingy with time, but as she brushed her fingers over the vaguely lumpy surface Ariadne encountered a smoother ridge, perpendicular to the floor. It was about three fingers wide, she found, and did go down to the floor and as high as she could reach. A couple of feet further along, she found another.

_It's a doorframe. _

Unfortunately, the space between was also brick. There was almost certainly another room beyond the long wall, but there was no way she could get to it without tools.

Ariadne grimaced, disappointed, and kept going, more for something to do than anything else. She found another such door, also bricked up, not far from the wall that held the window. _All knowledge is worth having,_ she told herself, but the truth was it wasn't worth _much._

_I wonder what's back there. _She sat on her own cot and spun idle fantasies - an unfinished basement, a wine cave, a game room; food storage, other prisoners. Whimsey tempted her to bang on the wall and see if she got a response; common sense said it would be very difficult to make enough noise to be heard through the brick, and it would certainly wake Philippa.

_Why can't there be a good secret passage when I really need one?_

She always put them into the mazes she designed for extractions, because one never knew when an escape route would be needed - or just a hiding place. Sometimes Arthur was the only other one who knew they were there, but she always had them.

In fact, Ariadne decided, she would put at least one in the next house she designed as well. It was an old, old game for her, creating buildings in her imagination, and it dated from long before she even knew what architecture was. She had thought up houses for her friends, her pets, her dolls, herself; her dream house, and now she had to smile over the term, had changed again and again over the years, but there was always one, though its form and structure and location might differ.

These days it was a tall house on a windy coastline, a place of shifting rain and sun, with many windows to catch the light and shutters to close against the storms off the sea. It had a state-of-the-art kitchen, a fireplace in the bedroom, a tower studio, and a walk-in closet bigger than most people's bathrooms - the latter intended solely for someone whose most numerous possessions were sartorial, and who always hung things up so they didn't crease.

Ariadne knew she might never actually build the place, any more than she had built any of its predecessors, but that wasn't the point. She wrapped her blanket around herself, closed her eyes, and carefully inserted a secret passage into the house's heart, hiding entrances in all the rooms so that no matter where one was, one could get out of the building without using the doors. She even added a skylight at the top so that the passage could gather its own light, and no one looking at the house from anyplace but the air could even guess it existed…

Sleep let her roam it as if she were really there, and find the man waiting on the wide verandah with the smile he kept only for her. As he held out a hand to her, Ariadne knew she dreamed, and didn't care.

**xxxxx**

The answer came in the middle of the afternoon, when Arthur was asleep in his room and Dom was dozing in the suite's public area; they had been taking it in turns to sleep, but exhaustion still dogged them both.

But the ring of the phone brought Dom upright so quickly that he almost fell out of his chair reaching for the phone. He grabbed it before the second ring was finished. "Hello?"

"Very good." The voice was no longer mechanized; it was familiar, and bitter. "I'm glad you remember me."

Movement at his peripheral vision made Dom look around; Arthur stood in the doorway of his bedroom, wearing only boxers and his eyes narrow with sleep. Dom thumbed the speaker button on the phone and pulled it away from his ear. "You're a hard man to forget."

"Really? Not from where I'm standing." The bitterness was more pronounced. "You let them take me, Cobb. You let them take me and ruin me."

"You betrayed us first," Arthur pointed out harshly, crossing the room to the table where Dom laid down the phone, and Dom shot him a warning glance.

"You should have shot me!" Nash's voice was filled with fury. "You're a fucking _coward_, Cobb, and because of it I'm _nothing_ now."

"You're right," Dom said, trying to sound reasonable even though he felt nothing of the sort. "I am a coward. I'm also a father who loves his children very much, Nash. What do I have to do to get my daughter back?"

Nash growled, an inarticulate sound. "What about Arthur?" he said, his tone going contemptuous. "What's he willing to do to save his girl?"

Arthur's hands wrapped over the back of the nearest chair and tightened until the knuckles went white, and his answer was as close to pleading as Dom had ever heard him come. "Anything you want, Nash. Just…don't hurt her."

"I won't need to, if you do what I want." Nash seemed a bit calmer.

"Is it money?" Dom asked, unable to help himself. "Because I can - "

Nash made a scoffing noise. "I don't want your fucking _money,_ Cobb. I want _you._ You and your bitch. You _owe_ me."

"Then tell us what to do," Arthur cut in. "Tell us and we'll do it." He was leaning over the chair now, staring at the phone as if he could climb through it to where Nash was. Dom, whose own hands were folded together so tightly that they ached, could sympathize.

"Find me," Nash ordered flatly. "Find me and then we'll negotiate."

He cut the connection.

Dom almost choked on his lungful of air. Arthur spat a curse and flung himself back from the chair, pacing quickly across the room. "_Damn _him!"

Dom couldn't take his eyes from the phone, even though he knew Nash wasn't going to call back. "How the hell are we supposed to find him?"

Arthur thrust his hands through his already disheveled hair, which made him look like he'd stuck his finger in a power outlet. "I have no fucking idea."

"Wait a minute." Feeling like he was moving through molasses, Dom reached out and picked up the phone. "Arthur…"

"What?" The glare that accompanied the word faded into intentness, and Arthur strode over to look down at the device. "What is it?"

Dom activated the incoming-call list. "His number's listed."

Whether it was a mistake or done on purpose didn't matter. They both stared at it for a second's worth of disbelief, and then Arthur snatched the phone from Dom's grip.

Dom let him take it. He knew that the number most likely went to a disposable cellphone, but it was the first tangible clue they'd found, and anyway he had faith in Arthur's ability to take even something so small as that and find out more.

Arthur vanished into his room. Dom made himself sit still, hands clasped and resting on the table, trying not to read too much into what might, after all, prove to be a dead end. But the taste of hope was a heady, torturous thing, and it almost drowned out the lingering question.

_What exactly does he want from us?_

Dom knew that in the end it probably didn't matter. He was prepared to sacrifice much, up to and including his life, to see Philippa unharmed and free. He didn't want to leave his children fatherless as well as motherless, but if it came to that, Frances and Miles would raise them well, and in any case the alternative was too awful to contemplate.

He didn't know if Arthur felt the same about Ariadne, but he suspected that his old friend did. _If it comes to it, yes._

But one thing extractors learned - at least the good ones - was that not everything was as it seemed. Lambs going meekly to the slaughter could turn into wolves at the very last second. And that could apply to thieves as well as marks.

_Nash. _He remembered the man, all right; a top-tier Dream architect, not Dom's or Mal's equal but still quite good, but also a weasel. Not someone to be trusted, though his skill had outweighed that risk.

Dom still didn't know why the man had betrayed them to Saito, though he suspected Nash had been looking for a better payoff, or maybe protection from Cobol. He didn't care.

_We'll do as you ask, we'll do anything you say, Nash. But you took our hearts and you're holding them hostage, and men without hearts are very dangerous indeed. _Dom looked at his hands, wide and strong and capable, and his lips curved up in a wintry smile.

_Watch out. Because when we find you, as soon as the girls are safe, we will have no more reason to hold back. _

_And we are very, very angry. _


	5. Chapter 5

**Most of the characters and situations in this story belong to Christopher Nolan, Legendary Pictures, Syncopy, NBC, and other entities, and I do not have permission to borrow them. No infringement is intended in any way, and this story is not for profit. All others belong to me, and if you want to borrow them, you have to ask me first. Any errors are mine, all mine, no you can't have any. **

**The opinions expressed by characters in this story may or may not be those of the author. **

**Very heavy on our captives this week. So goes pacing. *shrug* **

**Editing, guidance, and banner (see my site) by the amazing Cincoflex.**

**xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx**

The second morning in the basement was practically a repeat of the first, and Ariadne was ready to scream by the time she heard footsteps overhead again. It wasn't that Philippa was misbehaving; it was just that she demanded nearly all of Ariadne's attention, and it was _deeply_ frustrating to someone not used to dealing with small children.

But the sounds overhead and the snap of the door unlocking hushed Philippa's babble, and once again the girl retreated behind Ariadne, though she didn't seem overtly frightened.

Their captor was holding four bags this time. He said nothing as he passed them by, the gun held loosely and dangling by his thigh, and Ariadne was seized with a dreadful impulse to just dive forward and try to snatch the thing away. She _wanted_ to, wanted to make that move towards freedom so badly that she felt her muscles quivering, but the little hand curled into the back of her shirt held her back. As tired as she might be of Philippa's company, Ariadne couldn't risk her. The image of him pointing a gun at the child never left her mind.

So she stood silent and cool, watching as he set all four bags on the kitchen table, then paused to examine his captives once more.

Ariadne said nothing. _I don't have anything to say - that he'll want to hear, anyway._

He didn't say anything either, merely collecting the garbage bag from the little trash can next to the sink. Then he turned back to the stairs and ascended them, as if the two of them were no more than - fish in a tank, was the absurd simile that came to mind. Ariadne watched him disappear, trying to wrestle down the sudden upwelling of rage.

_Why are you so angry? You should be glad that all he did was drop off supplies - _

When the footsteps faded, Ariadne unfolded her arms and made herself count to ten before she moved, solely as an exercise in control. But the contents of the bags brought an immediate lightening of her mood, because one of them was exactly what had been requested.

"Hey, Philippa, check it out. Toys!" She held out the bag to the girl, who scrambled up from her little town, to which she'd returned, and rushed over.

Moments later, Ariadne wondered if she shouldn't have kept most of them back to hand out over time, but it was too late; Philippa sat in a circle of goodies like the aftermath of Christmas morning, thrilled. It was mostly cheap stuff from a dollar store or the like, but Ariadne couldn't bring herself to care and Philippa certainly didn't.

Ariadne left her to her ecstasies and unpacked the other bags, finding more groceries, a bottle of store-brand lotion that she immediately opened and used, a wooden hairbrush but no comb, and some magazines that looked as though they'd been chosen at random from the women's section of a store display.

_Not my usual stuff, but better than nothing._ Ariadne set them aside for later and put the brush to use, easing out the snarls that the plastic fork hadn't been able to handle, which was most of them. And frowned thoughtfully as she brushed.

_No pens or pencils, no knives. No comb even. Nothing sharp, or that could be made sharp._

_Is he really that scared of us?_

The toy bag haul included three flimsy coloring books and a small packet of crayons. When she'd finished with her hair, Ariadne scooped up the closest coloring book and the crayons, and flipped open the book. As she'd expected, the inside of the cover was blank white, and smooth compared to the newsprint of the inner pages.

Ariadne sat down at the card table, dumped out the crayons, and began.

It had been a long time since she'd worked in that particular medium, but the crayons were new, which helped. Ariadne filled the blank space with the most elaborate sketch she could manage with crayon, a fantasy castle thick with buttresses, towers, flags, and crenellations. She added as much detail as possible, envisioning the rooms within as she always did, the people who might move through them and the way the building would look under sun, moon, rain or snow. For a little while, their prison was big enough to hold a fortress.

"That's _mine._" The petulant voice intruded, and Ariadne blinked back to herself, lifting her head to meet Philippa's irritated gaze.

"Yeah, but I only used the blank page, I didn't color anything in."

Philippa's scowl didn't waver, and Ariadne lifted a brow, feeling somewhat irritated in return. This display of authority seemed to work; the little girl dropped her eyes, then scooted in closer, tucking a hand through the elbow Ariadne had propped on the table and examining her work.

"It's pretty," she said judiciously. "Is it a princess castle?"

"Could be," Ariadne acknowledged, sitting back so Philippa could have a better look. "Maybe lots of princesses."

The glance flicked her way chastised her for not remembering fairy tale protocol. "One princess. Lots of brothers." Philippa leaned in closer to the image. "An' a king."

"And a queen?" Ariadne asked, amused. The amusement increased as Philippa debated the question and then nodded.

"Can you do horses?" she asked, and Ariadne grimaced.

"Sorry, kid, not in this one. But down here, see?" She tapped the bottom of the drawing. "That's a stable."

That seemed to satisfy Philippa. Ariadne gave herself a mental smack for being too proud to admit to a child that she couldn't draw living creatures, and hoped that Philippa wouldn't think of the other blank pages.

"Daddy puts our drawings on the refrijator," the girl said.

"I'd have to tear the cover off," Ariadne pointed out. "And we don't have a fridge big enough to hang anything on."

Philippa straightened. "It can go on the wall." She looked so hopeful that Ariadne couldn't dismiss the idea out of hand.

_How do I hang something without tape or nails?_

"Well, let me think about it a sec, okay?" She patted Philippa's back gingerly, winning a nod before Philippa returned to her new toys. Ariadne shook her head at the kid's faith, and considered the question.

It took a little experimenting, but it turned out that apple juice made a decent glue if one had patience. Ariadne didn't think the heavy paper would stay on the wall for long, but it was a start, and it moved Philippa to color in some of the pages meant for the purpose and present them to be put up as well.

"The place's starting to look like home," Ariadne muttered as she glued the last one into place, sarcasm being better than swearing when small ears were awake. Any attempt to make the place more pleasant felt oddly like a species of acceptance, even betrayal; an acknowledgment that they were going to be there long enough for it to matter.

But, as it always did, it came back to Dom's child. Ariadne had no illusions about the profession she'd chosen; it was illegal and unethical both, and carried many dangers on both sides of the law. But she'd _chosen._ Philippa hadn't.

And if she could keep Philippa from nightmares like those that plagued Dom, then she would.

**x**

The day slowly spun away. Ariadne limited herself to one magazine, reading it slowly from cover to cover despite her minimal interest in six-week diets or how to supervise a young teen's Internet usage. When she had exhausted every charm the periodical had to offer, she pulled out the subscription cards and drew dense, intricate mazes around the address blocks until she ran out of space.

They had lunch, and then dinner, and another round of baths, but when Ariadne suggested bed Philippa folded her arms across her chest and looked stubborn. "No!"

Ariadne opened her mouth to argue, and then wondered why she was bothering. _Who cares if we keep a schedule, anyway? _"Okay," she said instead. "Stay up if you like."

Judging from Philippa's blink, she hadn't expected capitulation, but she was quick to take advantage, going back to the village on the rug and her pony, which had been joined by spoils from the toy bag - a rubber ladybug, and a trio of furry mice that Ariadne suspected were really meant to be cat toys.

Bored, Ariadne flopped down on the nearest cot, which promptly slid back and banged into the wall, buckling slightly. She rolled her eyes, mouthed "cheap bastard" at the ceiling, and got up, flipping the cot over to see if it could be fixed.

All three of the beds were folding camp cots, light and simple. The impact with the wall had shoved one of the u-shaped legs back inward, and it was a simple matter to straighten it back out. The flat lock bar hadn't been pushed far enough into place, Ariadne deduced, and remedied the matter.

And then froze, her attention caught by the thin piece of metal under her hand.

_This is a tool_.

Forty-five minutes later, after enough prying to make her fingers sore, Ariadne had not one but two blunt blades; the lock bar had been hinged with a rivet in the middle, and the rivet was as cheap as the rest of the cot. Ariadne stood up, stretching cramped muscles, and was about to leave it when Arthur appeared in her mind's eye. He didn't say anything, but the lift of his brows was eloquent.

Ariadne rolled her eyes again, grinned, and set the cot upright once more, replacing the blanket and pillow she'd dumped so that it looked perfectly normal. Her imaginary Arthur nodded approvingly, and faded, and Ariadne bit back a sharp rush of loneliness and glanced over at Philippa.

But the girl was still intent on her game, so Ariadne moved the card table this time, trading stability for ease of movement, and climbed onto the flat surface. The little window was dark with night, but there was enough light coming from the ceiling fixture for her purposes, even with her shoulders in the way.

Gripping the half-bar firmly, she began scraping at the paint sealing the window.

**xxxxx**

It was what he did, hunting elusive scraps of data through the real and virtual worlds. Anyone could assemble a basic profile on a mark; the real skill lay in finding the secrets, ferreting out the hidden facts that could make all the difference in an extraction.

Arthur was still, privately, angry at himself for missing the fact that Fischer had obtained Dream-defense training, but despite the innovation of an inception it had been just another job. This was different. Arthur loved his work, and he took it very seriously, but this was more than even the life and death games they played in other people's heads. Ariadne and Philippa hadn't had a choice.

_If you hurt them…_

The phone number went, as expected, to a disposable cellphone that had been purchased in Oaxaca, but the call hadn't come from there. Arthur had to use some decidedly illegal methods, but he was eventually able to find a listing of all the calls made on that particular handset.

Most of them, and all the most recent ones, came from Ontario, Canada.

He broke off his researches long enough to tell Dom to book tickets back to the New World, and returned to the hunt. He'd done research on Nash himself, back when they'd first started working with the man, and it didn't take long for Arthur to refresh his memory using those files.

It appeared that Nash hadn't bothered to update his list of aliases. Juan Ramirez had crossed the U.S.-Canadian border going north just a day after Ariadne had been abducted, and Daniel Bohdai's credit card had been used several times in various stores in Ottawa.

_Gotcha._

**xxxxx**

Ariadne finally had to quit when her fingers gave out. Since the overhead light never went out, she didn't know how much time had passed, but when she carefully gathered up the paint scraps and turned to jump off the table, Philippa was sound asleep on the floor again. Ariadne disposed of the paint in the toilet before tucking Philippa into the girl's cot; the makeshift scrapers took more thought, but Ariadne eventually hid them under the inserts in her shoes, reasoning that if their captor decided to move them again, at least she would have them with her. Since she and Philippa both went shoeless in their prison, walking on the hard metal wasn't a problem at the moment.

_Now, as long as he doesn't decide to look closely at the window, we're good._

It drove Ariadne _nuts_ the next day to have a goal so tantalizingly close and still have to spend time playing tea party or hunt-the-invisible-dragon, but there was no getting around it, and she did her best to conceal her impatience. _You've got time,_ she told herself. _Nothing but._

She was working on the "really really fancy stable" Philippa had requested, using another inside cover and more crayons, when the footsteps sounded again overhead. Ariadne stiffened, but a surge of pride kept her seated at the table when the door opened above. Philippa got up from her game and came to stand next to Ariadne as their captor came down, and Ariadne put an arm around her and watched in silence.

The routine seemed the same; he hesitated slightly at the base of the stairs, but then passed them both to drop the food bags on the table. Once again, it was impossible to what his expression might be beneath the mask, but his gaze flickered over both of them as it had before, impassive.

Then it dropped to the half-finished drawing. Ariadne couldn't _see_ the change that came over that hidden face, but she could feel it, and she froze, as panicked as a rabbit shadowed by a raptor.

He shoved the gun into his waistband, took three steps forward, and grabbed the coloring book, crumpling the cover in his fist and then hurling the whole thing at the wall. Philippa gave a small scream and ducked as it flew, but Ariadne didn't move, her eyes fixed on him, hypnotized.

Their kidnapper leaned down over her, shoulders hunching and his breathing harsh and loud. "You're not an architect down here," he said, low and vicious. "Down here you're _nothing_, do you understand me? You're just a piece in the game."

Stunned by the sudden attack, Ariadne couldn't even nod. He shoved past them, swiping at the pictures pasted to the wall; Ariadne's castle came away in his hand, and he _bit_ the top of it, ripping the paper in half with one pull before throwing the pieces to the ground and storming up the stairs. The slam of the door was almost a physical blow.

Ariadne didn't really remember the next few minutes. When her head cleared and her heart slowed, she was sitting on one of the cots, back against the wall and her arms wrapped around Philippa. The child was curled in Ariadne's lap and sucking her own thumb, and Ariadne could feel her trembling.

Her own muscles were shaking too. Ariadne held Philippa tightly, and they simply sat, for a long, long time.

**x**

Philippa fell asleep before Ariadne could summon the will to move. She laid the girl cautiously down on the cot and rose, stretching stiff limbs and feeling fear heat into molten anger. Part of her was aware that the entire encounter could have gone _much_ worse, but it wasn't a consideration.

_How dare he._

She didn't know what bug their captor had in his brain regarding architects, but he'd frightened her, he'd frightened Philippa, and he'd _destroyed_ her work. Sure, it might have been idle sketching done clumsily, but it was still her creation and he had no _right_.

Not to destroy, not to frighten, not to snatch them up and keep them prisoner. Not to torment those who loved them.

Underneath the renewed rage was a colder caution. _If he flipped out once, he might again. _Just because he hadn't touched them this time didn't mean he might not be moved to violence next time.

It was terrifying, this sudden slide into irrationality. Ariadne realized that she had assumed that he was stable, given the way he'd treated them, even listened to their requests. But clearly she could not depend on that.

She swung around to look down at Philippa. The little girl seemed all right to Ariadne, healthy and not too stressed; _but what do I know? It's not like I have a baseline._

_I need to get you back to your dad, kid._

Moving deliberately, Ariadne picked up the mess the kidnapper had left, stacking the fallen pages tidily on the table and topping them with the abused coloring book. She smoothed out the creases as best she could, and lined up the spilled crayons neatly.

Her torn sketch she regarded for a long moment, then shredded it into scraps and threw them in the trash. It hurt, because somehow the picture had become something precious, but she didn't want to set their captor off again if she could avoid it. _Best to get rid of it._

Besides, she promised Philippa silently, when their ordeal was over she would draw an even bigger castle, inside and out, with the fanciest stable any pink pony could ask for.

_Just because._

Then she retrieved one of the metal bars, and resumed working on the window. Ariadne wasn't at all sure she could pry the thing open even when the paint was stripped away, but she was definitely going to find out.

To her surprise, one jerk had it creaking open, late weak sunlight gleaming off the dirty glass. The air that swept in was damp and chilly, and smelled wonderfully _alive_. Ariadne crammed as much of herself as she could into the window well, taking great lungfuls of the freshness. _I didn't realize how stuffy it was in here. _

She heard Philippa stirring below, and with great reluctance Ariadne closed the window again and got down.

"I'm hungry," Philippa announced, sitting up and rubbing her eyes, and Ariadne laughed, buoyed by her achievement.

"Then it must be suppertime. Come on and help me make it."

She considered her few options all through the meal's preparation and devouring, and through six rounds of tic-tac-toe. The fact that there _were_ so few took a lot of the glee out of getting the window open…but she had managed it.

There was a certain sour humor in that, too. _Three weeks ago I was designing whole worlds and impossible mazes. Now I'm stoked because I got an old window open. How far you've fallen, Temenos. _

Philippa stayed up late again, no doubt due to her nap, but Ariadne didn't mind so much; she could plan while she played. When the little girl finally fell asleep, Ariadne spent a couple of hours turning the pages of the magazine she'd finished into the origami figures Saito had taught her, one long rainy afternoon when both of them were bored with listening to Arthur and Dom argue.

She spared a thought for the industrialist, wondering as she occasionally did what, and how, he was doing. Ariadne hadn't realized at first that his presence on the team was unusual, and she had found him courteous if occasionally imperious. They had spent a little time chatting about Heian architecture and where to find good beer in Paris, and Ariadne had enjoyed his rare humor.

He'd displayed a strong sense of honor, in the end, and a courage that had impressed her. But they had parted ways in the Los Angeles airport, and that had been the end of things.

It was probably just as well, Ariadne thought as she made the last folds in a beetle. Secrecy was paramount for the success of an inception, and judging from the upheaval in the Fischer empire, they had in fact succeeded.

_How things change…_

She'd gone from a struggling student to a level of architecture she'd never even imagined; gained, if not a fortune, then more money than she'd ever had in her life; changed her plans and her direction; and discovered that her desire for Cobb's right-hand man was most definitely reciprocated.

_And now I'm stuck in a box with a kid, and a madman dropping by once a day. It's enough to give me whiplash. _

Ariadne chuckled sourly and crumpled up the leftover scraps of paper, regarding her collection of figures with a jaundiced eye; the paper was really too soft to work right. But it didn't matter.

Yawning, she propped her head on her hand and considered the window for the _n_th time, but no matter the mental contortions, she couldn't fit through it. _If I had a mirror, I could build a periscope… _

But she didn't. There was no mirror in the bathroom, and no other surface reflective enough to serve. What would have been a matter of sticking her arm through and taking photos was negated by the lack of a cellphone.

There _was_ one other option, but Ariadne didn't even want to name it, let alone consider it. Sternly repressing it, she put herself to bed and sank into sleep.

But the idea was still there when she woke, as insidious as the dawn light creeping in the window. Ariadne lay still on her cot, arguing with herself.

_It's too dangerous. _

_But it's the only option. _

_She's only six._

_She's smart, though. _

_What would Dom say? _

Her mind had no answer for that last, but the cooler part of her reasoned with ruthless logic.

_This situation isn't stable. To change it, you need more information. This is the only way to get it. _

_I'm sorry, Dom._

Setting her jaw, Ariadne threw back the blanket and got up.

She had breakfast ready by the time Philippa woke, and they ate cold cereal together companionably enough, Philippa telling Ariadne all about the dream she'd had, in between mouthfuls.

But the girl pushed aside the bowl before she finished the last few bites, giving Ariadne a searching look. "Is something bad going to happen?"

The question was so unexpected that Ariadne gaped at her for a moment. "I…I hope not. Um, why?"

Philippa's shrug was uncomfortable. "'Cause Daddy looks like that when something bad's happening."

Unsure whether to be amused or insulted, Ariadne let that pass. "No, I don't think so. Listen, Philippa, I need you to do something." She hesitated, trying to figure out how to get the importance of her request across without frightening the child, and then inspiration struck. "It's a quest."

Philippa's eyes widened. "Like a princess?"

"Exactly." Ariadne set her own bowl aside. "You know that the bad guy locks the door every day. But I think you can go out the window."

"We can run away? Like Rapunzel and the prince?" Philippa bounced in her chair, excited, and Ariadne shook her head.

"No, kiddo, sorry. I can't fit through there."

Philippa's face fell so fast that Ariadne was surprised by a desire to hug her. "But I don't want to go by myself!"

"No, no." Ariadne waved her hands, trying to rein in the girl's expectations. "You don't have to go anywhere. I just want you to crawl through and tell me what you see, then come right back in."

"Oh." That was apparently more acceptable, though Philippa still looked somewhat doubtful.

"It's dangerous," Ariadne said solemnly and quite honestly. "I don't know where the bad guy is; he might be right over us in the house. If he - we don't want him to see us."

Philippa nodded, equally solemn. Ariadne wasn't sure if the girl understood the seriousness of the proposal or if she was taking it as a game - or even if it really mattered. "When do I look?"

Ariadne glanced at the window in question, and decided that it was still early enough. "How about right now?"

It was a moment's work to put the table in place, and a few more to figure out the best angle at which to lift Philippa so that she could squirm over the open window and out through its frame; Ariadne cursed her own shortness, not for the first time, and endured a foot glancing off her chin, but in the end Philippa pulled herself up and into the weedy half-circle enclosure.

"Careful," Ariadne cautioned from below. "Be careful." Her palms were sweating, and her protective instincts were telling her to snatch the child back inside, while the rest of her was desperately envious. "What do you see?"

The top of the metal enclosure came just short of Philippa's waist as she scrambled to her feet, and Ariadne realized, watching, that she had no physical way to prevent Philippa from just climbing out; her own arms were a fraction too short to reach the girl from her own position. But Philippa showed no sign of wanting to leave; Ariadne couldn't see her head from that angle, but Philippa was standing still, her fingers gripping the enclosure's edge.

"Nothing…" came back the uncertain answer, and Ariadne bit back a growl.

"Really?" she said, keeping her voice level and trying to inject some humor. "Nothing at _all?_"

"Noooo." Philippa shifted, and Ariadne made herself wait a little longer. Her patience was rewarded when Philippa crouched down to look back through the window. "There's some trees far away."

Yelling wasn't going to help, Ariadne told herself. "No road, no other houses?"

Philippa shook her head. "There's a car over there," and she jabbed a finger to one side. "I think it's the bad guy's."

"He's not _in_ it, is he?" Ariadne asked in alarm, but Philippa just shrugged and stood up again, turning a little as if to scan around her. Ariadne pressed herself against the wall, staring up through the opening. "Just trees?"

"Yep," came the slightly muffled reply. Ariadne forced herself to think.

"Philippa, is the land flat, or are there hills?" Not that the knowledge would do her much good, but it might define the limits of Philippa's view.

The girl dropped down again. "Flat," she said. "'Cept for mountains, but they're really really far."

The news was not encouraging, but Ariadne mustered a smile. "Okay. Thank you. Come back in now."

She had to talk Philippa out of wiggling back in head first, but shortly the girl was safely on the floor again and Ariadne was shoving the window shut once more. She took a brief ironic moment to heap curses on the head of whoever had picked the window; with the proper tools she might have been able to actually remove the thing from its frame entirely, but her little pieces of cot would never stand up to the pressure required, even assuming she could get enough leverage.

It was _deeply_ frustrating.

Ariadne listened to Philippa's chatter with half an ear and let the girl play with the origami figures, even though most of them weren't really sturdy enough to hold up for long. An itchy urgency was growing in her, a feeling that she - that _they_ - were running out of time. She had no idea where it was coming from, but it occupied her thoughts underneath the little stories Philippa was making up for each figure and the responses required from Ariadne.

The urgency only grew when her stomach told her it was lunchtime. _He didn't come._

Ariadne had no idea what had kept their captor from his daily visit - pique, maybe, or an errand to run, or a hangover.

_Or maybe he's abandoned us. Or been hit by a bus, and no one knows we're down here. _

The thought was even more chilling than the prospect of his return. Ariadne knew the odds were that he was just fine, and that perhaps he was just toying with them, but she couldn't shake the idea. Combined with her sense of urgency, it tuned her nerves to a frayed pitch.

_Don't panic,_ she ordered herself. _Wait and see. _They had food enough for at least another day, two if she stretched it. There was no sense in doing something stupid just because she was getting twitchy.

_Besides which, if he's messing with you, do you really want to give him the satisfaction?_

Philippa didn't seem to notice that their captor hadn't shown up, or if she did she didn't mention it. Neither did Ariadne.

She made Philippa a bubble bath that night using the cheap shampoo and let the girl stay in until she raisined, combing out the soft strands of her hair afterwards and tucking her warm in the cot. There was no way she could concentrate enough to read another of the magazines, so Ariadne chose one of the banal coloring book pictures and colored it in, in obsessive, fine detail, using her thumbnail to sharpen the crayons when necessary.

Eventually her eyes burned, and her head swam enough for her to sleep.


	6. Chapter 6

**Most of the characters and situations in this story belong to Christopher Nolan, Legendary Pictures, Syncopy, NBC, and other entities, and I do not have permission to borrow them. No infringement is intended in any way, and this story is not for profit. All others belong to me, and if you want to borrow them, you have to ask me first. Any errors are mine, all mine, no you can't have any. **

**The opinions expressed by characters in this story may or may not be those of the author. **

**Without giving anything away, I believe that, despite appearances, this chapter does not require any of the commoner trigger warnings. **

**Cincoflex put up with my dithering and whining over this whole thing with great patience and cheer, and made sure it worked. **

**xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx**

In the morning Ariadne woke Philippa and fed her, then pushed the table under the window once more. "I need you to get out and look some more," she told the child. "Can you do that?"

Philippa nodded, solemn again, and Ariadne pulled in a breath and tried to tone down her intensity, dropping to a crouch in front of the girl.

"Sneak around the house and see what's on the other side, okay? If you hear anyone coming, run back here."

"Okay." Philippa allowed herself to be boosted up and out again.

Ariadne watched her scramble up out of the window's well with rather less stealth than might be hoped for, and commenced some of the longest few minutes of her life, not excepting a plush hotel lobby in a certain Dream and the eyes of way too many projections burning into her. The instant that Philippa's shadow disappeared the entire operation seemed far too great a risk.

_If she doesn't come back I'll __**rip**__ the window out with my bare hands. _

_I'll jump him when he comes in and get that gun away from him. _

_I'll… _

…_What'll I tell Dom?_

But after what felt like several eternities she heard the sound of small feet outside, and Philippa climbed back in, bending down to grin at Ariadne. "There's houses!"

The surge of hope was dizzying. "Are they close?"

"There's a street, like at home. They're on the other side."

"What do the houses look like?" Plans wheeled through her head despite the slightly baffled look Philippa shot her.

"Like the ones where we live. They're brown." She sat down and prepared to come back inside, but Ariadne swallowed hard and held up a hand.

"Wait."

_Insane!_ her caution screamed, but she ignored it, because only six years old or not, Philippa was at the moment _free_, and they couldn't afford to waste the chance. "Listen, kiddo, here's what I want you to do."

Ariadne waited until Philippa's eyes met hers, and swallowed again. "I want you to cross the street - carefully! - and go knock on the door of the closest house, okay? And tell whoever answers it that you need a police officer." It was the simplest way Ariadne could think of to get help; whether the police believed Philippa's story or not, she would be in the hands of the authorities, and most importantly _away_ from their kidnapper. "If nobody answers, then you go to the next one. You keep going until you get a police officer."

The plan wasn't without its own risk, Ariadne knew; there was no guarantee that whoever answered a given door would be benevolent. But Ariadne figured the odds were in her favor; if the houses here were like those in Dom's pleasant suburban neighborhood, then Philippa was most likely to run into a homemaker or telecommuter.

The girl's expression grew doubtful. "I'm not 'lowed to cross the street by myself."

"But this is an emergency," Ariadne countered. "I'm sure your daddy would let you."

Philippa's lower lip protruded a trifle, and Ariadne realized that it was more fear than stubbornness. "You've crossed streets _with_ your dad, haven't you?" When Philippa nodded, she continued. "Well, just do what he does. Look for cars, and cross carefully. You're a big girl; I know you can do it."

For another eternal minute, Ariadne was afraid that such blandishments wouldn't be enough, but finally Philippa nodded once more. "I need Pony."

If it would give her the courage to obey, Ariadne wasn't going to argue. She jumped down and found the toy, climbing back up and handing it through, and on impulse passing her sweater through as well; the air coming in was chilly and she didn't know how far Philippa would have to go. "Go fast, okay?"

Her answer was the sturdy legs disappearing over the side of the well.

Ariadne held her breath and strained her ears, but she heard nothing - no footsteps coming back, no young voice. It took her several minutes to force herself to close the window and get down from the table.

And then she looked at the empty room, and sat down hard on one of the cots. The last few days had sometimes made her feel like she would have given almost anything for a few minutes of peace, but now that the small intrusive presence was gone, Ariadne felt desperately _lonely._

_Get over it,_ she told herself severely. Even if the police didn't believe Philippa, even if it took her too long to get back to Dom, even if no one found Ariadne in time…none of it mattered as much as Philippa being safe.

_Though I'd really rather not starve to death down here if I can avoid it. _

Ariadne shoved the table back into place. _If he shows up again, I can pretend Philippa's in the bathroom. It might even fool him twice._ Or she could try to take away that gun after all, now that there was no small hostage to be threatened.

She picked up one of the unread magazines and sat down again, the ebb of adrenaline making her body heavy, and settled into what was no doubt going to be a very long and boring day.

The slam of the door above made her jump and squeak, the magazine slipping from her fingers - she hadn't even heard anyone crossing the floor above. Heavy feet plunged down the stairs, and there was their captor - flushed and furious, Ariadne saw with a pulse of fear; the ski mask was gone.

He had dark hair and dark eyes and ears that stuck out a trifle, and a wispy goatee that did nothing to hide his snarl or the scars across his cheek. Ariadne stared at him, frozen by his rage.

He pointed the gun at her. _"Up."_

There didn't seem to be much choice, not with him halfway across the room. Ariadne complied, pushing slowly to her feet and wondering frantically why he was so upset.

The gun waggled, gesturing her towards the stairs. Ariadne climbed them equally slowly, telling herself that it didn't really matter, Philippa was safe, but not believing it. For all her determination to strike back, Ariadne felt very small just then; small and helpless.

The room at the top of the stairs was indeed a kitchen, but a barren one; the counters were empty and the refrigerator door hung open. The prod of the gun's muzzle between her shoulderblades steered Ariadne out through an empty room that was probably a dining room, and up another flight of stairs. It was very creepy to climb them in the silent house, a madman with a gun at her back, but Ariadne didn't see much choice in the matter.

At the top of the stairs were two doorways. The pistol prodded her through the one on the right.

This one was not empty. It had two windows, and a cot much like the ones downstairs. It also had a wooden chair, in which sat -

- Philippa, crying silently. Ariadne's heart plunged towards her toes, and she took a step toward the child before the gun jabbed her.

Philippa didn't look hurt, a fact that Ariadne grabbed at desperately. But she was secured to the chair by several loops of duct tape that went around her waist and the back of the chair; her hands were free, but Ariadne knew that there was no way they were strong enough to tear the tape.

"You." The voice was all rage, low and awful, and a hand landed heavy on her right shoulder. "On the bed."

The fear was pushed aside by a surge of horror, doubled by Philippa's presence. Ariadne gave up thought, turned her head, and _bit_ him.

Or tried to. Her teeth sank into the glove, but hit something far harder than flesh beneath. Their captor snarled, shoving her hard with his gun hand, and the glove and whatever it contained came _loose,_ falling to the floor with a muffled clunk.

Ariadne stared down at it for an absurd second before figuring it out. _It's __**artificial**__._

She spun to look at the kidnapper, almost ignoring the gun out of sheer surprise. His right arm ended in a stump just above where his wrist should have been, a rough-scarred patch that didn't look terribly surgical.

"That's right," he said, still hoarse with rage. "I was an architect just like you. _Better_ than you. Until that son of a bitch Cobb betrayed me, and Cobol did _this!_"

His foot lashed out, kicking the prosthetic hand across the room and making Philippa squeak. Amidst her horror and her anger, Ariadne felt a faint wince of sympathy; an architect missing a hand was missing one of his most essential tools. She looked back at his face, summoning courage. "So learn to draw with your left hand."

His laugh was entirely devoid of humor, and not something she ever wanted to hear again. "They thought of that," he said in a mocking tone, and tipped the gun up, bringing the muzzle to his face and - in a move that sent a wave of nausea through her - _poking_ his right eye.

It clinked. Her nausea grew stronger as she realized what had happened to him. _They took out his eye…_

Above and beyond the horror of the mutilation, they had destroyed his depth perception. It was diabolical; he might have been able to overcome one handicap or the other, but both at once was ruinous to an architect.

And now Ariadne understood why he had been so upset by her castle sketch.

"You were just supposed to be a game piece," he said casually, though the fury was still there in every line of him. "Just Arthur's piece of ass. But you had to _push_ it."

She kept silent, trying to figure out what to do next. _If he tries to…well, I can fight him, he can't keep the gun on either one of us that way - _

"On the bed," he continued, gesturing with the gun, and Ariadne drew herself up.

"No," she said flatly, wondering frantically how far he would push her bluff.

He sneered, and swung with blurring speed. The gun cracked against the side of her head, and Ariadne fell, lights spinning in her vision, the echo of the blow all but drowning out Philippa's scream. As darkness and the floor flowed up to meet her, Ariadne saw the metal case beneath the cot, and realized that it wasn't her body he wanted to invade.

**xxxxx**

"This is the place." Arthur looked out the windshield at the house, one of many others like it in the quiet neighborhood, though it sat by itself on a scrubby lot. There was nothing about it that suggested a madman was dwelling within, Dom thought; it looked supremely ordinary.

Arthur parked the car neatly at the curb and shut off the engine, and the two men looked at each other for a long moment. "I guess we just go up and knock," Dom said finally.

Arthur's face was grim as he unlatched his seatbelt. "I don't like this."

"I don't either, but unless you have a better idea…" Dom opened his door and climbed out, scanning the front of the house and seeing no movement at any of the windows.

Arthur's mutter was best ignored. He rounded the car and joined Dom, looking up at the second story. "Should I head around back?"

Dom bit his lip, then shook his head. "I think we need to present a united front here."

Arthur's shrug was disagreement, but not protest. They headed up the short front walk, two men - maybe visitors, maybe salesmen or even proselytizers, nothing out of the ordinary. There was no one else visible on the street just then, though Dom saw a car pass by on the cross-street a block away.

There was no real porch, just three shallow steps up to a painted cement base. Dom knocked firmly on the door - or started to, as it swung open at the first rap.

He exchanged another look with Arthur, who was reaching back a hand to the gun holstered at the small of his back. Dom shook his head; Nash hadn't told them to come unarmed, but Dom knew they were the supplicants here. Waving weapons around was not the way to get what they wanted.

He hadn't told Arthur to leave it behind, though. Not that Arthur would have obeyed him anyway…

The hall beyond the door was empty. It ran back through the house to a set of stairs leading up; a room on their left was dim, while the one on the right had light shining out into the hall. Dom gave a mental shrug and went right.

It was a living room, carpeted, empty of furniture though it had a marble-manteled fireplace. The light came from the long window at the front of the room, and Dom glanced around as they came in, puzzled and not a little alarmed. _Did we make a mistake? Is this the wrong house?_

But as they reached the center of the room, a throat cleared behind them. Dom and Arthur both whirled; Dom aborted his instinctive reach for a weapon, and grabbed Arthur's arm when the latter didn't.

It was well that he did. Nash had the drop on them, a heavy gun pointed unwaveringly in their direction, and he was far enough away that any attempt to get it away from him would result in at least one life lost.

He looked terrible, Dom realized; tense, emaciated, and burning with a rage that Dom hadn't realized he was capable of. "Oh good, you're here," Nash said with a casualness that made the hair go up on the back of Dom's neck. "Cobb and his bitch."

"Yes," Dom acknowledged, keeping his voice even. "We're here, just like you wanted. Where are the girls?"

Nash's face contorted into a scowl. "Don't patronize me, Cobb. I hold their lives in the palm of my hand." He held out his right arm.

There _was_ no hand. Dom's stomach twisted at the sight, at all its implications, and he looked back up to meet Nash's gaze.

"That's right," Nash said, the smile that replaced his scowl even worse than the frown. "Cobol's handiwork. They took away my _life_. It's only fair that I do the same to you."

His gaze included them both now, and Arthur shifted, as if preparing to dive for that heavy gun anyway. _Don't,_ Dom thought at him. _Not yet, not yet!_

"That _is_ fair," Dom replied, and on at least one level, he meant it. "I'll do anything you want, Nash, as long as you let the girls go."

"Unharmed," Arthur added in a growl.

"Good," Nash said, and pulled the trigger.

The bullets slammed into Dom one-two-three, punching him back into the wall and jarring his vision into insensibility. Dimly he felt himself sliding down to the floor, unable to catch himself or even his breath through the sudden fire.

Underneath the echo of the shots he heard a scrambling thud and the grunts of exertion, and struggled to focus his blurring eyes. His heart was pounding, his lungs laboring against the pain, but more important was Arthur, and the girls -

The two men were grappling, and as Dom managed to clear his vision he saw Arthur pin Nash up against the opposite wall, both of them fighting over the gun. "Not - a - monster - " Nash panted.

Arthur snarled. _"Where are they?"_

Nash laughed, and did something that had Arthur reeling back, doubled over. Dom tried to shout, but nothing but pain filled his throat as Nash lifted the gun once more.

The shot seemed louder than the ones that had struck Dom, and at that range there was no missing. Half of Nash's head simply ceased to exist, and his body crumpled slowly to the floor.

_No!_

Arthur straightened, slow and painful, and stared at Nash's corpse for a long second before simply closing his eyes in defeat.

"Not...your fault," Dom managed, gasping, and Arthur shook his head, opening his eyes again and coming to kneel at Dom's side. He unzipped Dom's jacket with quick movements.

"Did he get you?" he asked tightly, fumbling open the buttons of Dom's shirt.

Dom coughed. The shock and pain were ebbing slightly, though his breath still stuttered. He looked down at his own slumped form and the Kevlar vest beneath his shirt. "Cracked…a couple of…ribs, I think," he managed.

Arthur hissed, but his hands were gentle as he helped Dom sit up. Their ace in the hole had proven its worth; all three bullets had been caught by the vest, and Dom thanked Heaven that Nash hadn't thought to look for blood.

Arthur sat back on his heels as Dom tilted his head back against the wall and tried to breathe shallowly. "Now what?" the point man asked, his tone without hope.

"Search," Dom said, holding on to his own hope as hard as he could. "Odds are…they aren't far."

"If they're - " Arthur bit off the next word, but Dom knew what he had started to say. _If they're still alive._

_They are. They have to be._ Dom gritted his teeth and looked back at his old friend. "Help…me up."

Getting to his feet involved several bad words and enough pain to make Dom dizzy again, but eventually he had his balance back. Cracked ribs, yes, and some very severe bruising, but definitely better than the alternative.

Arthur's hand was still under his elbow when Dom stiffened, a sound teasing at the edge of his hearing. "Wait."

Arthur froze, and Dom strained his ears. The sound came again, a faint scraping noise. It was overhead.

The staircase was too narrow to navigate side by side, and Dom couldn't have borne lifting his arm to Arthur's shoulder just then anyway, so he climbed the stairs by himself, painfully slowly. Arthur stayed just ahead of him, gun in hand; the shots hadn't brought anyone to investigate, but Nash had used associates to capture the girls, and there was no telling who might be waiting for them.

But when Arthur whipped around the frame of the door, gun ready, there were no shots, just a short high scream. Dom, right behind him, saw nothing but Philippa, sitting in a chair with tears running down her face. _"Daddy!"_

The pain was less than nothing. Dom fell to his knees next to her, tore apart the tape binding her with one jerk, and filled his arms with his daughter. She wrapped arms and legs both around him, squeezing hard, but the renewed protest from his ribs was lost beneath the feel of her, her little-girl smell, the frightened sobbing. _She'sokayshes'okayshe'sokay - _

He clutched her close, rubbed her back, pressed a fervent kiss to the crown of her head. "_Pippa_. Pippa, are you all right?"

Her sobs didn't cease, but he felt her nod against his neck. Dom squeezed her harder, then let go enough to see her face. "Are you sure?" he asked, voice rough with relief and fear.

She didn't _look_ hurt, and she swallowed and nodded again, still crying. Dom pulled her in again, dizzy once more with joy and gratitude, and aware that his own cheeks were wet. _Thank you, thank you - _

It took long minutes before the pain reasserted itself, and before he even remembered there was someone else in the room. Dom looked up guiltily, still holding the slowly calming Philippa.

The room was small. Arthur was just a few feet away, kneeling next to a camp cot that held one still form, his fingers wrapped around a thin wrist. Dom caught his breath at the sight of Ariadne lying so motionless, but the scowl on Arthur's face was worry, not despair; and then Dom saw the lead running from her other wrist to the dream machine on the floor.

He looked a silent apology at Arthur, whose return glance was forgiveness. "How is she?" Dom asked.

Arthur shrugged. "Her pulse is strong but slow. Other than that - " He didn't continue, merely jerking his chin at the machine.

Dom shifted enough to look at it properly, and saw why Arthur hadn't just aborted its programming and woken Ariadne. The sedative combination was chilling; not only had Nash slotted in the heavy kind used for multi-layer Dreams, he'd used a dosage that far exceeded Ariadne's slight body weight. The addition of another, different vial - something other than somnacin - was not a good sign.

And the other lead lying unretracted on the floor, needle tip bloody, told them that Nash hadn't sent her under alone.

Dom took as deep a breath as he could manage. "Let me see to Pippa, and we'll go in."

Arthur's smile was slight, but in it was all of their long history. "No."

Dom started to protest, but Arthur overrode him. "Take Philippa home. She needs you more."

The subject of their argument hiccuped, sniffled, and lifted her head. Her face was puffy and wet, and rather to Dom's surprise Arthur pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and passed it to her. "What happened just now, Pippa?" he asked her kindly.

Philippa rubbed her face in the cloth. "Reannie told me to go find somebody and call a policer." She gulped. "But the bad guy caught me and tied me up."

Rage surged in Dom's gut, and he abruptly wished Nash were still alive, so that he could extract revenge. But Philippa kept going. "He got Reannie from downstairs and _hit_ her, and she went to sleep. 'Nen he went to sleep too, but he woke up and told me to be quiet, and went away. And then you came."

"He hit her?" Arthur frowned again, and released Ariadne's wrist to run careful fingers over her face and head. He paused over one spot above her ear, and then tried to check her pupils, but Dom could see that her eyes were rolled back in what was - Dom devoutly hoped - drugged sleep rather than trauma-induced unconsciousness.

"Reannie took care of me," Philippa added sadly. "Is she going to be okay?"

Dom opened his mouth to reassure her, and found that the gentle prevarication simply wouldn't come. "I hope so," he said instead. "Mr. A is going to help her."

"Okay," Philippa said, and leaned her head on Dom's shoulder. Dom took the handkerchief and stuffed it absently into his own pocket.

"Do you want to do this here, or should we move her?" he asked quietly, nodding at Ariadne, and Arthur grimaced.

"I'm not sure. Without knowing what he did - "

That was the question, sure enough; they had no way to tell what Nash might have done in the Dream, and whether time was of the essence just now, or irrelevant.

"We'll move her," Dom said, making the choice for them all. "Just as far as the hotel." He didn't point out that Nash's confederates could return at any moment, but he didn't need to. Arthur merely reeled in the loose lead and began preparing the machine for working transport.

Dom looked down at his red-eyed daughter. "Pippa, sweetheart, I got a little hurt downstairs. Can you walk on your own for a bit?"

Before she could answer, Arthur spoke. "I'll take her down, and come back. You go get the car ready."

Given that Dom didn't want Philippa to see what lay in the room downstairs, he wasn't inclined to argue. "Will you let Mr. A carry you out to the car?"

Philippa shot Arthur a dubious look, but then nodded again, rubbing her eyes with one fist. Dom set her down reluctantly and climbed painfully to his feet, pulling himself up with the chair. A small hand clutched at his pants leg. "Where does it hurt, Daddy?"

Dom pulled in a breath through clenched teeth and tried to smile reassuringly. "I bruised my chest, that's all. I won't be able to pick you up for a little while."

Philippa stuck her thumb in her mouth, looking worried, but didn't argue. Arthur stood and then crouched down in front of her. "Ready?"

Slowly she let go of Dom and let Arthur gather her up. Dom went first down the stairs, moving as quickly as he could manage and letting his fingers bite into the handrail at each jarring step. Behind him he heard Arthur's quiet voice instructing Philippa to close her eyes tight and not open them until he said it was safe.

Dom was half-afraid that someone had heard the shots, but when he exited the house there was no one staring suspiciously; a jogger ran past on the other side of the street, led by a large dog romping at the end of its lead, but the woman didn't even glance over at them.

Dom unlocked the car and opened the front door so Arthur could put Philippa on the seat. It wasn't the ideal place, given that the back seat was safer for small children, but Ariadne was going to have to go back there with someone to hold her in place, and there wasn't room for three.

Philippa's thumb was already back in her mouth, but Dom was in no mood to chide her for slipping back into the habit. He opened the back door too, and leaned gingerly against the car to wait for Arthur to return.

He was going to have to call Special Agent Davis, he reminded himself, to tell her that the situation was over. Dom decided he would allow her to inform the Canadian authorities of the corpse. It was clearly suicide, and anyway, they would all be out of the country by the time the news went through. Besides which, as far as Dom could remember they had actually done no more, legally speaking, than interfere with a federal investigation, at least from the point of view of the United States.

There was going to be quite a load of _annoyance _to wade through, that was clear; but to Dom it didn't matter in the least. Philippa was safe.

_Ariadne isn't_, he reminded himself. All extractors knew the hazards; Nash could have locked her into a repeating nightmare, or worse yet somehow sent her down to Limbo. He wasn't even sure she was _physically_ all right, given the dosages Nash had used.

But his heart was singing for all of that, guilty but exulting. His daughter was _safe._ Unharmed, as far as he could tell, and _safe._

A few cracked ribs were a small price to pay in exchange.

It took just a few minutes before Arthur appeared in the house's doorway again, arms burdened with Ariadne's limp form. The open machine was carefully balanced on her stomach, and Arthur was walking very slowly and stiffly to avoid spilling it. Dom pushed away from the car and hurried, as best as he could manage, to help, lifting the machine off her with a wince and backing towards the car.

It took some maneuvering to get both Ariadne and the machine safely in the car; the lines the kit used weren't as long as the ones both men were used to. Halfway through the process Philippa slipped out of the seat and tugged on Dom's leg again. "Daddy?"

He glanced down at her, sweating with the pain he wouldn't allow himself to vocalize. "What is it, Pippa?"

"I'm gonna go over there to get Pony, okay?" She pointed down the sidewalk, and Dom nodded distractedly.

"Not too far," he told her, and returned to the task at hand. Without discussing it, they'd decided that Arthur would ride in back, since holding Ariadne in place would require more strength than Dom possessed just then.

When they were settled, Dom straightened painfully and looked around for his daughter, alarmed until he saw her trotting back with something violently pink in her hand. "The bad guy made me drop Pony," she said in explanation, holding up a cheap horse figurine.

"I'm glad you found him," Dom said, leaving explanations for later. "Hop in and buckle up."

Fortunately for his ribs, Philippa was able to fasten the seatbelt herself. Dom closed her door and went around to the driver's side, settling himself gingerly into the seat and grateful that the car was an automatic. For a moment the only sound within the vehicle was the steady churn of the machine behind him; then he turned the key, and the engine drowned it out.**  
**


	7. Chapter 7

**Most of the characters and situations in this story belong to Christopher Nolan, Legendary Pictures, Syncopy, NBC, and other entities, and I do not have permission to borrow them. No infringement is intended in any way, and this story is not for profit. All others belong to me, and if you want to borrow them, you have to ask me first. Any errors are mine, all mine, no you can't have any. **

**The opinions expressed by characters in this story may or may not be those of the author. **

**Good grief, this took **_**way**_** too long. My apologies. I had some (minor) health issues to deal with, but I still should have got this up sooner. **

**Cincoflex**** got me through this story from start to finish, from approving my choice of plots all the way to the final line, plus all the lovely banners along the way. Thank you, dearest.**

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

The figure on the bed looked too small. Ariadne always looked younger when she was asleep, but now she seemed frailer, almost sunken, and Arthur wasn't sure if it was an effect of the drugs, or her capture, or - more chillingly - whatever was going on in her mind.

_Hold on,_ he told her silently. _I'm coming._

"Yes, it's about the color of a good pilsner. No, I can't, we don't want to unplug - yes, okay." Dom was standing on the other side of the bed and speaking into his phone, one hand resting on his daughter's head where she clung to his leg. He glanced down at Ariadne, then peered closer at the vials in the machine next to her. "Yeah, red."

Arthur couldn't hear Yusuf's responses, but the tension in Dom's face eased slightly. "Good. Good, that's a relief. Thank you. Yeah, we'll keep you posted." He snapped the phone shut. "It's just an off-brand enhancer. Nothing dangerous."

Arthur let out a long breath. Part of him had been desperately afraid that the additional vial in the dream machine was a poison of some kind; such things weren't unknown. "All right. Thanks." He started rolling up his shirt sleeves. "Now get out of here."

"Are you sure?" Dom asked, and Arthur shook his head.

"Philippa needs you," he repeated. "Take her home. We'll catch up soon."

Dom's mouth twitched, perhaps at Arthur's optimism, but he didn't protest further. Next to him, small hand wrapped in Dom's fingers, Philippa yawned, and Arthur spared her a soft look. As worried as he was about Ariadne - as frantic, inside - he was heart-glad that the little girl was safe and relatively unharmed. He had no particular affection for children, but as far as Arthur was concerned no decent person liked to see innocence hurt; and there was Dom to consider as well.

She leaned her head against Dom's hip and smiled sleepily back, and Arthur looked back to her father. Dom's face showed his conflict, but he obviously knew Arthur was right. "If you need _anything_ - "

"I'll call."

Dom nodded once, a jerk of his head, and turned to go, closing the door gently behind him.

Arthur sighed, and reached down to pull the sheet up over Ariadne, tucking it neatly across her chest. _She gets chilled so easily - _

He'd already prepared himself, emptying his bladder and removing anything constricting; it was going to be a long session. Arthur programmed the machine with careful precision, eyeing the settings already in place for Ariadne unhappily but unable to change them. Disrupting her sedatives without knowing what Nash had done to her could do irreparable damage.

He slipped the lead into his wrist, taped it down, and stretched out next to her, lacing the fingers of his free hand with her own limp ones. _Come on, lover, help me find you._

The machine hissed, sighed, and sent the chemicals rushing down his line. Arthur closed his eyes.

He was walking down Pennsylvania Avenue, at night, his breath puffing in the cold. Arthur looked around with reserved interest; he had never actually been to Washington in real life, and he had to wonder how close the details were. Usually Ariadne was obsessive about such things…

It took him a few more minutes of walking to realize that there were no people around, not even his own projections; it felt like he was alone in an entirely empty world. Moreover, there was a sound hovering just beyond the limit of perception, a hum that was raising the hair on the back of his neck.

Arthur looked up, but there were no stars to be seen, nor clouds; just an empty black sky. As he watched, though, snow began to fall, wide fluffy flakes of silver floating down.

The first one settled on his cheek, a feathery brush, but instead of melting into a drop of cold, it _burned._

Arthur flinched, wiping frantically at the spot, and felt others start up on his hands and scalp. Hastily he conjured a parasol, creating it out of dreamstuff and glass, transparent but impervious to the deadly snow. The flakes continued to fall all around him, sending little wisps of steam up from the pavement as they etched tiny craters into the concrete.

He walked on, more carefully now, and within yards discovered why there was no one else around. There _had_ been people, once; now there were just stains on the sidewalks, vaguely human-shaped.

He shuddered, and went on, thinking as he walked. There were rules inherent in Dreaming - some of them dictated by the human brain or the drugs used, others by tradition. Working with Dom had taught him that many of the things that were said to be impossible were not; like so much else in life, Dreaming was often about will.

And concessions made in the interest of working on a Dreaming team could fall by the wayside when Dreaming solo…or when in active conflict. The latter was a situation strenuously avoided by extractors, because it so quickly became dangerous chaos, with one mind striving against others for dominance. Even when an extraction was crashing and burning, a team kept the integrity of the Dream - partly so that the mark wouldn't realize the attempt on waking, but partly for their own psychic safety.

Now Arthur wondered whether the deadly snow was Ariadne's, or Nash's. If Philippa's observation was accurate, she'd been unconscious before Nash had hooked her up to the machine. This was presumably her dream, at least superficially; but had she been in actual control of it when Nash had come in? Had she even realized it was a dream?

He didn't know. And the difference could mean she had survived…or that Nash had crushed her consciousness into nothing. The human brain was perfectly capable of cycling a scenario over and over with no one steering the boat, as it were…at least until biochemical shutdown began.

"Ariadne." Arthur gave her name to the night, wondering if she could somehow hear him. "Well, love, you are the best at mazes. I guess this is my chance to find you in the center."

He kept walking.

There was nothing so obvious as a thread, but despite not being an architect, Arthur knew the tricks. Working Dreamscapes only _seemed_ infinite; in fact, they were often almost claustrophobically small, designed to keep the mark from wandering. While all bets were presumably off in this situation, he didn't think that the empty, apocalyptic world would go on for too long.

And somewhere at the edge of his perception was the faintest flavor of Ariadne, the essence of her consciousness just barely hinting at a direction. He didn't concentrate too hard on it, instead focusing his ears on the soft deadly hiss of the snow melting into the sidewalk and his will on keeping the umbrella whole, and let his feet go where they wanted.

He came at last to a carousel, acid-pitted and derelict, the horses not wood but snow-scorched fiberglass. Its round canopy had a hole burned through it, as if by a lightning strike, and several of the horses were twisted and broken. On the edge of the destruction lay a familiar scarf, as if flung there by a blow, but if there had been any body it was long gone.

Arthur crouched next to the scarf for several long minutes. The scene had all the earmarks of a losing fight, but it also felt impersonal, staged.

_What happened here?_

He let the scarf lie where it was, and straightened, stepping off the carousel and leaving it behind. The street seemed to stretch on for another mile or so, but he cut across and headed for a narrow path between the nearest buildings, feeling the world fade around him.

It reformed as a high desert, thin air whistling past and the rocky ground brightly merciless under the unshadowed sun, and Arthur smiled grimly and made his umbrella opaque before heading across the waste. _No maze goes on forever. I will find you, Ariadne. _

But what he found was battlefields. Each setting was empty of projections, silent and abandoned; stage sets after the show was finished, worlds stripped of inhabitants. And in the center of each was the remains of conflict, some Dream-fight brought to a violent end - spatters of blood, discarded weapons, damaged surroundings. There was no way to tell who had won and who had died; but Arthur had the very bad feeling that the situation was not at all obvious.

In a standard Dream, death meant waking. With heavier sedation, death sent the consciousness to Limbo instead. But a master Dreamer could bend the rules, spin illusions, make things appear as they were not; and Nash had been a weasel, but he'd also been _good_.

_Why did you do this, Nash?_ he thought, threading his way through needles of stone that stretched towards the empty sky. The two architects had never even met prior to the kidnapping. Arthur could understand hurting Ariadne to make _Arthur_ suffer; but why try to hurt her in the Dream, where Arthur could not see?

Or had the aggressor been Ariadne, fighting her captor? That didn't fit either; Ariadne could be fierce, but combat wasn't her specialty and she tended to avoid conflict in Dreams.

_Did he piss you off that much, love?_

But the humor faded quickly. All Arthur's long-honed instincts told him that she was not the instigator. She had fought, she had fled, she'd been brought to bay and fought again, losing or winning -

Arthur frowned, and reached out to touch the strands of dark hair caught on the edge of a broken metal bar. This new world was a ruined playground, incongruous and faintly menacing under a cheerful spring sun.

Had Nash made her _think_ she'd died, over and over again?

Arthur shook his head and carefully freed the tress, tucking it away in his pocket. _Where are you?_

World after empty world, he couldn't find her. The scant flavor of her teased him on and on, but never grew stronger; finally Arthur reached a dream that seemed to be nothing but an endless plain of grass. The wind singing lonely through it had dried the blood that was all the sign that anyone had ever been there, and though Arthur searched, he found no other gateway.

For lack of anything else to do, he sat down in the long grass, wrapping his arms around his drawn-up knees and grimacing in frustration, trying to smother fear with a sharp anger. _Ariadne - _

If she was not in all these worlds, she had to be somewhere else; he would not accept any other answer until her body stopped breathing. But if he couldn't find -

_You're overthinking it, boy, _Miles said sharply from Arthur's memory, though he could all but see the old man's eyes twinkle. Miles and Mal had always teased him about his lack of imagination, waving off his counter that analysis was more reliable, but the truth was that both modes were required for an extraction team, and his methods had served him well.

Ariadne, now, had imagination and to spare. Arthur felt his lips curve upward at the thought of her, bright-eyed and wondering as she first learned to build, confident and inspired as she honed her skills. He'd asked her once why she'd chosen a bishop as her totem, instead of the more obvious queen or rook, and she'd merely grinned and said _I like elephants._

He'd had to look that one up.

The question had led to a game of chess, however, and a long conversation, and some interesting variations once they had become a couple - Arthur had never imagined the variation of strip chess, for example. He usually won when they did have time to play, but it was often a hard fight; Ariadne was clever and sometimes sly, and he couldn't always predict what moves she would make on the board. She could be a ruthless player, and one of her favorite gambits was the queen sacrifice -

Arthur froze.

_You idiot._

Ariadne didn't like Dream-conflict. Ariadne created worlds. Ariadne, like any professional extractor, had been trained to control her projections lest they interfere.

Ariadne, Arthur reminded himself, was perfectly capable of _using_ those projections as decoys, and letting them distract Nash long enough to hide herself. He rolled his eyes, shaking his head, and tried to put himself in her mindset.

It was so simple, he had to laugh, though not entirely with amusement. Arthur stood and straightened his jacket with a quick tug, and went back the way he'd come.

He retraced his steps all the way to the snowy Washington, barely remembering to conjure the umbrella as he stepped into that starless night. Nothing had changed at all, and even the scarf lay where he'd left it.

Arthur ignored it, going past it to the center column of the carousel, which held the ride's machinery. One decorated panel was the door, and it opened when he pulled the handle.

But instead of gears and rods and a motor, he saw another world, a sandy beach with gentle waves. Not at all surprised, Arthur stepped through.

The first thing he saw were the miniatures. Down where the sand was still wet, someone had constructed a set of small nutshell dioramas, tiny sand scenarios that matched the Dream places Arthur had passed through on his search. They were incredibly detailed, and clearly Ariadne's work; the models that had anchored her battlefields. Prints pressed into the sand led to and away from the miniatures, a narrow foot with long toes.

_She's here._ Arthur turned back and started walking along the beach.

It took him just a couple of minutes to find her, curled up on a blanket spread above the high-tide mark, an old-fashioned beach umbrella shading her from the sun. Arthur knelt next to Ariadne, gently brushing a strand of hair from her eyes, and bit his lip in mingled worry and relief. She looked unharmed, but until she woke - if she did - there was no telling. The drugs alone could have harmed her, and what he saw before him could be as much an artifact as the Dream-worlds, a leftover symbol from a dying consciousness.

"Arthur?"

The voice behind him startled him into a quick turn. Ariadne stood behind him, eyeing him uncertainly, a heavy gun incongruous in her hands though her aim at his chest was steady.

The sight of her made it clear that the sleeping Ariadne was a decoy, and he lifted his palms in a gesture of surrender. "Ariadne." It was pure relief. "It's me, love."

Her aim and her expression both wavered, then firmed; Arthur approved. "Prove it."

It was a second's work to think of something that Nash never would have. "You snore like a miniature steam train," he returned, letting his lips curve up as she spluttered into a giggle. Ariadne set the safety on the gun and made it disappear, then darted forward into his opening arms -

- just as the music broke in, sourceless and surrounding. Arthur hugged her hard. "Thirty seconds," he muttered into her hair.

"Impatient," Ariadne said against his collarbone, teasing shakily. "I thought you were never going to get here."

"You didn't make it easy." He wanted to kiss her more than he wanted his next breath, real or illusory, but it was best saved until they were both awake. "I'll wake you as soon as I get out."

That made her lift her head. "What's wrong with shooting me here?"

Arthur grimaced. "Nash gave you much too heavy a dose. Now that I know you're…all right, I'd rather take the less traumatic route."

Ariadne wrinkled her nose. "Okay, but do it fast, huh? I am very sick of this."

Arthur simply pulled her closer, holding on tightly until it all faded away.

**xxx**

This headache, Ariadne thought as consciousness returned, was one for the record books. She didn't move for a moment, clenching her jaw against a faint surge of nausea, and wished paradoxically for sleep once more.

The blessed coolness of a damp cloth across her forehead made her open bleary eyes. The light was mercifully dim, but it was enough to make out Arthur sitting next to her, carefully slipping another one behind her neck. Ariadne was distantly astonished to see her normally neat lover unshaven and hollow-eyed, but it barely registered as she reached up for him, ignoring the compresses. The feel of his lean frame in her arms erased an ache that had been lingering for days, and the crush of his own hard hug was even better, proving his existence beyond the shadow of doubt or dream.

He was shuddering, she realized eventually, a tight hard shake that told her more about the time she'd been kidnapped than he probably ever would, and she strengthened her grip, fingers gathering up folds of his shirt without a care for any creases. "'S okay," Ariadne said muzzily, half-smothered in his shoulder. "'M okay."

"Bullshit," Arthur whispered, pressing his face into her hair once more, and she felt the hot seep against her scalp and swallowed around her own tight throat.

It was a long time before either of them could bring themselves to let go, but eventually Arthur lowered her down to the pillows again. Ariadne took the opportunity to hook a hand behind his head and pull him down for the kiss she'd been missing for days now, uncaring of the pounding in her skull.

Arthur sighed when she let him go, smiling down at her and pushing the hair from her eyes before sobering and peering closer. "Let me check your pupils."

Ariadne had to laugh, even though it hurt, and stared back up at him obediently. After a few seconds he blew out his breath. "I don't think you have a concussion," he said. "How do you feel? Any nausea?"

Ariadne grimaced. "A little, but if I hold still for a while I'll be okay." She didn't shrug. "Is Philippa all right? You did find her, right?"

"She's fine," Arthur replied quickly. "Dom has her. I can't say she won't need a shrink, but she looked like she was coping for the moment."

Ariadne sighed, closing her eyes as her worry dissolved, and left them closed. "Good…good."

Arthur's hands were wonderfully soothing as he rewetted the cloths - she could hear the water slosh - and replaced them. "_Is_ she all right?" he asked, and she could hear the emphasis. His fingers closed on hers, cool and damp from the water but reassuringly strong. "Are…are you all right?"

Ariadne squeezed back. "He didn't hurt us," she said firmly, knowing it wasn't quite the truth but understanding what Arthur was asking. "He barely came near us. I don't know what happened to Philippa before he put her in with me, but she didn't seem too upset, if you know what I mean."

Arthur let out a long breath. "Okay."

He released her and rose, moving around, and Ariadne relaxed back into the pillows, wondering how long the headache would take to ebb. "How did you find us, anyway?"

"Long story." Arthur's tone was slightly rueful. "But you should know that Nash is dead."

"Is that his name?" Ariadne pressed the cloth closer against her forehead, feeling a drop of water trickle down her temple, and a strange numbness at the news. "What the _hell_ was his problem with you two?"

"That's part of the story." The mattress dipped next to her hip as Arthur sat down on the bed. "I'll tell it to you, but I need to call Dom first."

Ariadne lay still and listened as Arthur spoke quietly into his cell, reassuring Dom that she was awake and sane. She rested her palm against his thigh and basked in his low chuckle, relieved beyond measure just to hear that sound again. Then he shifted. "Philippa wants to talk to you."

Ariadne held out a hand, and the phone was laid into it. She pressed it to her ear. "Hey, kiddo, how are you doing?"

"I'm okay," came the soft reply, half-shy. "Daddy says Mr. A woke you up."

It took Ariadne a second to figure out that she meant Arthur. "He did, yeah." She hesitated, not sure what to say now that the lonely intensity of their captivity was over.

"I'm glad you woke up. It was scary when the bad guy hurt you."

Ariadne found herself having to swallow before she could speak. "It was. But you were very brave, Philippa. You did what had to be done."

"He got me again," said the small voice, and Ariadne could hear the unhappiness. "I went 'cross the street, but he saw me and got me."

"It doesn't matter," Ariadne replied, wincing for Philippa's fear but keeping her own voice steady. "You tried hard, and then your dad and Mr. A found us."

"Yeah." Philippa paused. "Daddy says that the bad guy is gone."

"That's what, uh, Mr. A tells me." She heard the faintest huff of amusement from the man sitting next to her, and poked him gently. "So we don't need to worry about him any more."

"Okay." It was simple acceptance, and Ariadne felt another pang; somehow Philippa had retained her innocence, and it made Ariadne's throat tighten again. "'Bye."

The connection broke before Ariadne could answer, and she sighed, holding the phone out blindly. "She sounds good."

"Dom'll take care of her." Arthur took the device and touched the cloth on her forehead. "How's your head? I could give you a shot for it if you want."

The idea of more drugs didn't appeal, but the pain hadn't abated. Ariadne sighed again. "Sure."

His hands were as deft as always, straightening her arm out gently, spreading the coolness of alcohol on the tender cove of her inner elbow, sliding the needle in so carefully that she didn't feel the bite. As he rose to dispose of the hypodermic, Ariadne cracked one eye to watch him move around the bed, absorbing the sight of his reality that was only beginning to appease the hunger of her captivity. Sometimes she still had trouble believing that he really was hers, this enigmatic, elegant, cool-eyed man who had done more than she even knew was possible.

But his gaze warmed for her.

She closed the eye again. "Tell me what happened."

Ariadne lay still and listened as Arthur explained Nash's history, excusing neither himself nor Dom - nor Saito - in the manner of the man's destruction; he lay down beside her again as he went on to tell her how they had danced to Nash's tune across the globe and then found him. She laced her fingers through his as he told her how Nash had tried to kill Dom and then killed himself.

Eventually Arthur fell silent, but Ariadne could feel his tension. Her headache was much less now, muffled beneath the blessed numbness of whatever Arthur had given her, and in the tired, quiet space it left she knew what he was about to ask.

"As far as I know he never touched Philippa - he even got her some toys," she said, forestalling the question. His fingers tightened on hers, and she squeezed back. "He…got pissed at me when he saw one of my sketches."

The memory of that sudden rage was enough to chill her still, and Ariadne frowned, eyes still closed. "He always wore a ski mask, you know? Like he was going to let us go eventually. Right up until the last time."

"What happened?" Arthur asked, his voice hardening, and Ariadne thought that Nash should be grateful to be dead, because the grim promise under his tone was inexorable.

She shrugged a little. "I got Philippa out the window, and told her to go get help, but he caught her. He was - " She swallowed at the memory. " - furious. Dragged me upstairs and, uh…I fought him."

Arthur's grip on her fingers was painful now, and she wriggled them until it loosened. "He hit me, and I guess put me under."

"And tried to kill you." The words were rough.

"Yes, well…he was out of practice." The memory almost made her laugh, because it had been so _unexpected_. She was good at Dream combat now, Arthur had insisted she learn even if the architect rarely got involved in such fights, but she hadn't wanted to start something she wasn't sure of winning. "You saw the setup - I just let him play out whatever scenario he wanted, and he never slowed down enough to notice."

Ariadne shrugged, able to look back with some dispassion, though at first she had been terrified that Nash would figure out what she was doing. "He shouldn't have put me under first. He became the subject, but I had already built the world, and dropped in my own projection."

Arthur's laugh was short, but genuine. "And it didn't matter what projections _he_ came up with, because _you_ were never where he was."

"Exactly." All in all, she decided, it was an achievement to be proud of. Why fight, why run, when you could just hide?

He laughed again, though the sound choked off at the end, and gathered her into his arms as if she would break if he moved too abruptly. "You amaze me," he whispered.

Ariadne smiled against his shoulder, and held him close.

**xxx**

She was asleep.

Dom's ribs hurt furiously, and he was sick with the need for rest, but he couldn't take his eyes off the small figure curled up on the room's nearer bed. Cornsilk hair spilled across the sheet - she'd ignored the pillow - and the faint tide of her breath was audible in the hush of the hotel.

_Thank you…thank you._

Half of it was dizzy fear that if he closed his eyes it would all prove to be a dream, though he'd spun his totem obsessively while Philippa ate half a hamburger and all the yogurt that room service had supplied, chattering all the while about "Reannie" and games and the stories she'd made up about her plastic pony. Dom had listened intently, asking gentle questions from time to time and aware that the effects from her kidnapping would be long-term.

But just now all he could feel was gratitude.

_She's safe. She's okay._

The nightmare was over.

Frances would be flying up in the morning to help him bring Philippa home; he wanted his daughter back in a familiar environment, a safe place, as soon as possible. He had no intention of ignoring the kidnapping - Miles was already researching counselors - but he needed his family back together with a desperate hunger.

Philippa stirred, sighing, and Dom straightened with a wince, but instead of waking she began to emit a delicate snore.

The familiar sound made him grin, but behind the smile came a rush of tears. He closed his eyes and let them flow.

_Thank you._


	8. Epilogue

**Most of the characters and situations in this story belong to Christopher Nolan, Legendary Pictures, Syncopy, NBC, and other entities, and I do not have permission to borrow them. No infringement is intended in any way, and this story is not for profit. All others belong to me, and if you want to borrow them, you have to ask me first. Any errors are mine, all mine, no you can't have any. **

**The opinions expressed by characters in this story may or may not be those of the author. **

**Good grief, this took **_**way**_** too long. My apologies. I had some (minor) health issues to deal with, but I still should have got this up sooner. **

**Cincoflex**** got me through this story from start to finish, from approving my choice of plots all the way to the final line, plus all the lovely banners along the way. Thank you, dearest.**

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

_Two months later_

The woods behind Dom's house were beautiful in the sunlight. Ariadne let Philippa lead her down what was obviously a well-used trail, the small fingers warm in hers, and after a few minutes the trees fell back to reveal a light-filled meadow, high-standing grass starred with wildflowers.

"Wow," Ariadne said appreciatively.

"It's my favorite place," Philippa said, tugging her forward through the grass, where another faint trail led. Ariadne followed obediently, trying not to think about ticks, and they ended up at the far side of the small space. Under a wide pine sat a little wooden playhouse, obviously homemade and charming enough to make Ariadne instantly jealous, even though it was shorter than she was.

They settled cross-legged inside, among a light litter of small dishes and toy cars, and Ariadne regarded Philippa thoughtfully. "How's it going, kiddo?"

Philippa rolled her eyes, though the exasperation was not directed at Ariadne. "Okay."

"Nightmares?" Ariadne guessed. She had them herself, still, and even a caress of her new totem, the metal and stones cool under her fingertips, could not always shake the feeling.

"Yeah. Daddy says they'll go away." Philippa drew up one knee and rested her chin on it, palpably doubting, and Ariadne sighed in sympathy.

"I think they will, but it sure does take a while."

Philippa nodded glumly. "And that lady kept asking questions."

Ariadne laughed sourly. The FBI Special Agent was persistent, and Ariadne couldn't quite blame her, but she too had been very tired of the official probing before the woman had closed the case. Ariadne couldn't see why she'd tried so hard, given that Nash was dead and hadn't even died in the United States, but Arthur had counseled Ariadne to cooperate.

Though he'd…_hovered_, during the interviews. She had to smile at the memory; he hadn't managed to make Agent Harris nervous, but she guessed it had been a close thing. "She bugged me too."

"Yeah." Philippa idly scooted a toy car forward a few inches. "Do you hafta talk to somebody too?"

Ariadne quirked her lips. She'd refused to, steadfastly, until the crying jags and sudden losses of temper made Arthur's sober suggestion sound good. _Nightmares, I can deal with. Losing control…not so much._ "I do, yeah. Your grandfather found me a counselor like he found you one."

Philippa brightened a little. "Doctor Ann lets me make a fort out of the couch cushions sometimes, it's fun."

Ariadne was struck with a pang of amused envy; the Old-World richness of _her_ shrink's office allowed for no such lightheartedness. "Sounds like it. Mine just lets me sit on his."

For some reason this made Philippa giggle, and Ariadne grinned back. She didn't understand children any more than she had before, but she felt like she had a better grasp on this one, at least, and it was very good to see her safe and happy.

"Want to play tea party?" Philippa asked, picking up a small cup, and Ariadne laughed.

"Sure."

**x**

Inevitably, Dom drifted to the back door to watch for the girls coming back. Arthur refrained from comment; he understood the sentiment.

It had taken him more than a few weeks to stop waking in the night to check that Ariadne was still by his side, pillow scrunched under her head and exhaling the soft whistle he found so inexplicably charming; and it wasn't until she grabbed him by the tie, put her nose up against his, and ordered him to stop breathing down her neck that he'd managed to leave her alone for more than an hour or so.

_And she's an adult. I can't even imagine what it's like when it's a child._

Perhaps fortunately for Dom's sanity, Philippa was too young to chafe at her father's need to watch over her. Arthur trusted that Dom would get over the urge by the time she left for college.

They went on chatting about Dream architecture, casual shop talk even if Dom was out of the business, and Arthur continued with the chore Frances had set him, shelling peas. The motion was repetitive and almost soothing, now that he had the hang of it, and part of his mind catalogued the sounds of her creating something elaborate in the pantry, small clinks and mutters in French. Dom's house held an aura of peace, now; a little wistful, a little sad, but content and homey.

A good place to raise children, even without a mother.

His fingers were nimble enough to oust the slick little spheres without looking, and so Arthur caught the shift in Dom's posture, the slight relaxation. "They're on their way back?"

Dom glanced back from the window, lips curling wryly. "I'm that obvious?"

Arthur shrugged amusement, not bothering to reply. Dom quirked a brow at him, shorthand for the retort that Arthur wasn't exactly unconcerned either, and looked back out again. Arthur counted peas silently and reflected on the emotional undercurrents of this visit - Dom determined to prove his gratitude, if quietly, and Ariadne desperately embarrassed and wishing Dom would forget all about it.

Normally he would be on Ariadne's side, Arthur thought, but this time he agreed with Dom. She might argue that she only did as any decent human being should have, but they all knew better; and she deserved the acknowledgment, whether it was Miles' hard hug or Dom's deference or Frances' brief, choked thanks.

Or James' favorite toy car, a present for taking care of his big sister and one that was all his own idea. Ariadne had thanked him gravely, and the little vehicle now rode in her sweater pocket.

He was down to the final pod. Arthur let the last legumes roll into the waiting bowl and set the emptied pod on the pile of its brethren, gaze catching on the flicker of light from the totem encircling his finger. It had been his idea to get matching ones, even though only Ariadne's had been lost, and her expression when she'd realized what he meant was a moment he treasured still.

She wasn't the same, of course; a little more sober, a little more wary now. But neither was he the same.

He popped a pea into his mouth, biting down on the sweet greenness, as Dom swung the door wide for the girls. Some things were worth holding; some things were worth remembering.

And as Ariadne's eyes met his over Philippa's head, and lit her grin with love, Arthur swallowed and smiled back.

End.


End file.
